I started with a 300 bps (103) modem in 1980 to support my company mainframe. It was primitive, but much faster than driving 30 miles in the middle of the night to provide technical support. That first modem used the handset with rubber cups on the mike/speaker. Later, I found a 212a (1200 bps) modem at the swap meet. It was an improvement, but had the typical glitches that put the modem into remote digital loopback. That was the first modem on the Xenix machine. When the 2400 bps modems arrived, I purchased one immediately. The 9600 bps external modem followed. Eventually, I moved to an ISDN line around 1996. DSL arrived in 1997. That was good enough until last year when I dumped it for WiMax.
BTW, I did my first TCP/IP over an AX.25 link on 2 meters. Inside my "office", I ran 9600 bps SLIP links between the machine until I could afford ARCNET cards. I had to write the interface drivers to ARCNET as nobody was much interested in running TCP/IP over ARCNET. It was blessed relief when 10 Mbps Ethernet cards reached a price range I could afford...even if it was on coax cable.
That is one very cool history. I appreciate it.
As for me, I was in the business of trying to figure out how all this new stuff could be used (eventually) by relatively normal people so I became a kinda sorta super user first implementer on steroids and cooked/programmed up my own prototypes and demos for the big wigs. For awhile I had a position with a fortune 25 company that bought me (after a bit of a fight) just about anything I wanted as long as I could justify how R&D on it could help people be more effective. We were into voice recognition, digital video and video disc (pre cd-rom)and all the desktop to vax/mainframe connectivity. All the vendors came and gave us software and specialty boards. I liked that job! Later on I consulted.
So, starting with a TI 994a as a toy when it came out, I didn’t own a real computer until I fell for the Mac Plus and did a master’s thesis on the user interface’s interaction with total computer literates. This was in 1986-7, I think, and so all my experience dates from there and was purchased by poor me or the university. I got to play with everything. I keep playing today but nobody pays for it anymore since I’ve been sidelined by a disability.
Anyway, I really admire your deep experience and see how cutting edge it was. Too cool. :0)