Reading up on old #Sega systems and the first network connected consoles, I am reminded of the first ridiculous service charges I got in life: $400 in dial-up overage fees, for Phantasy Star Online, for the #DreamCast.
We had just moved to Santa Cruz, and chose a dialup number with a local area code, but apparently it was not "local", and one month of playing "online" cost $400!
I say "online", because #PSO maxed out at 4 players, and most of the time we were solo...
@maiki I got hit pretty hard with a bill for BBS usage once as a kid. Good times
@tomasino @maiki many countries (such as UK) had stopped unmetered local calls years ago and it cost at least 5p simply to dial the number and the ISP to seize the modem connection at the other end then a time based charge on top of that, which limited realtime online use (most folk used store and forward for email, newsgroups etc).
Also hearing equipment engaged (UK reorder) tone was not uncommon and at one point British Telecom couldn't keep up with demand for modem circuits in most cities..
@maiki And those ridiculous fees are what led many of us to start hacking phones :)
@xmanmonk @maiki I'm still enjoying having no phone at all. Beginning at the age of 17 some outfit has always paid to tether me: beepers, lcd beepers, voice pagers, cell phones... A couple of years ago I had 5 phones. 3 at one time! Pharma co, construction and an air courier. I thought I needed one: I don't. I bought an 80$ android and bought a month's time for 20$. After 30 days only the phone co had sms'd me spam. I phoned 0 times and no one called me - all know I hate phones, so I killed it.
> A couple of years ago I had 5 phones. 3 at one time! Pharma co, construction and an air courier.
I sometimes forget you are a character from a frontier land pulp novel... 🤣
@maiki I'm the most interesting utter failure I know... ;-)
@maiki A long time ago someone told me you could dial *69 to hear what number called you last. I thought that would be good for when no one left a message (voice/data/fax modem), so I scripted it in. Apparently I was too lazy to write the few lines of code to check if the person had left a message or not, so as soon as the call collapsed it would seize the line and *69 and record it after every call.
I didn't know there was a fee for *every* use until the bill came...
Looking forward to similar issues with bandwidth in the coming year! #notreally #internetisaright