• bitwaba@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Going next door to borrow the phone because you’ve been downloading something all day and didn’t want to lose it

    Sprinting to the kitchen yelling “don’t pick up the phone!” when it starts ringing, for the same reason.

    • Dharma Curious@startrek.website
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      8 months ago

      OMG, yes!

      When I was like 11 or so, we had a company called EarthLink for Internet, and when we tried to cancel one month because we were broke, they gave us 3 months free. After the third time of that happening we realized we didn’t have to pay for Internet anymore, and spent the money on a second phone line instead.

      It. Was. Glorious.

    • jaybone@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      How would it start ringing? Wouldn’t the caller get a busy signal?

      If you had call waiting, it would beep on the line which might fuck up your internet connection but it wouldn’t cause a phone to ring in another room, right?

      • f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        If you wanted to play what is basically a LAN game today, you would have your modem directly call your friend’s modem for only the cost of the phone call. We did this for Doom “deathmatches”.

        You could dial into a server for multiplayer but you would typically have to pay for that access because the server’s owner was paying for fancy multi-line service that could handle all the connections at once.

        • jaybone@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Oh I see what you mean now. Like if your friend is calling you and your mom picks up in the kitchen.

        • jaybone@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Yeah before that we had BBSs or bulletin boards you could dial in to.

          None of this explains how a phone in another room would ring when you are on a call.