Started by Matteo Rossi (@roman_road) ·
what the dial-up modem noise was actually saying
5 sources · 42 min down the hole
How I got here
- Started with
- What were dial-up modems actually doing during the screeching?
- Ended at
- Acoustic coupler
The Trail
- “what is the dial up modem sound” (google.com)
- The sound of the dialup, pictured (windytan.com)
an annotated spectrogram of the whole handshake. this is the one
- Modem (en.wikipedia.org)
- Dial-up Internet access (en.wikipedia.org)
- Acoustic coupler (en.wikipedia.org)
before modems plugged in, you literally put the phone handset into rubber cups
What I came away with
The noise is the two modems negotiating over a phone line built for voice: announcing themselves, switching off the network's echo cancellation, probing what the line can carry, and agreeing on a speed. The speaker was on so you could hear when it went wrong.
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