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Also, it blocked the phone line - unless you had several phone lines or ISDN, going online also meant nobody could call you. And that in a pre-mobile phone setting.

After that year with 14.4k modem, I got an ISDN card. Back then, that was a huge step up. Unfortunately, with ISDN you do not get the screeching noise modems make.

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Friends of my parents started to mention offhand how our phone line was always busy a little while after we got the modem.

Back then it was mostly BBSes because AOL/Compuserv/Prodigy/GEnie all charged by the hour and were quite expensive. Cheapest was around $1/hour, and it didn't even get you proper Internet access. Neither did the BBSes, but at least they were free.

Prodigy was flatrate for the longest time. I think it went from $12 to $15 and finally started charging by the hour (all before their Windows release. This was the dos version).

I was allowed to use the internet as much as I wanted after 10pm to 2am to avoid tying up the family phone line

Except if you had call-waiting enabled on your phone line - so if someone did call you the pips would drop the line. I think you could add some digits to the AT dial string to temporarily disable it.

Sorry for dropping carrier, got call wasted.

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