It was never about concurrency but it was way more about resilience against connection drops. You all know how unreliable dialup was of someone happened to touch a phone or a storm made the lines a bit noisy. Having a transfer fail halfway through, before browsers/oses had some concept of resuming partial downloads, was one of THE most infuriating things.
Getright was my bae in the dial-up days. Saved so many large anime downloads when someone called and broke the connection due to call waiting. Or when the speeds tapered off over the hours and I had to re-dial my ISP.
Made the content I downloaded feel more special and kept my focus more than all this instant gratification nowadays.
I took some super easy college night courses just so I could sit on their network and download floppy after floppy of Doom WADs without spending my precious minutes.
I remember pulling an all-nighter to make sure my Internet stayed connected and stable long enough to download Netscape Navigator. I think it was like 18MB. Previous attempts failed, and I didn't know of any download managers back then
I don't remember ever needing one for concurrent downloads, just to resume one if the connection was lost or something happened. But I also don't remember downloading anything prior to being on Windows 95. 🤷♂️
I remember downloading like 20-30 parts of a single thing and having the task bar at the bottom just be full of download windows.
FlashGet was my jam back in the early 2000s. Then one day it downloaded malware a malicious third party had somehow managed to inject into its updater 😒
Okay I've confused concurrency for parallel downloading. The latter browsers still don't do by default. And that's the reason I used to use download managers
34 Comments
empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 73 pts · 182d
It was never about concurrency but it was way more about resilience against connection drops. You all know how unreliable dialup was of someone happened to touch a phone or a storm made the lines a bit noisy. Having a transfer fail halfway through, before browsers/oses had some concept of resuming partial downloads, was one of THE most infuriating things.
OwOarchist@pawb.social · 41 pts · 182d
95%
96%
97%
97%
97%
97%
97%
97%
97%
97%
DOWNLOAD FAILED. Retry?
empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 19 pts · 182d
0%
0%
1%
2%...
FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU-
X@piefed.world · 5 pts · 182d
Someone forgot to pray to the download gods… and fickle gods they be.
SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 182d
Thank the lord for
wget -ctinylightshow@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 20 pts · 182d
Fuck, I'm old.
Toes@ani.social · 19 pts · 182d
I remember downloads having 40+ rar files so you didn't need to restart the entire download.
VitoRobles@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 181d
And the par files to validate and repair your collection of rars.
ashitaka@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 182d
Getright was my bae in the dial-up days. Saved so many large anime downloads when someone called and broke the connection due to call waiting. Or when the speeds tapered off over the hours and I had to re-dial my ISP.
Made the content I downloaded feel more special and kept my focus more than all this instant gratification nowadays.
X@piefed.world · 5 pts · 182d
“Whew, gotta be careful with this one, I’m making two copies. On two floppies!”
NeilNuggetstrong@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 182d
Damn, you guys are old. I couldn't tell this apart from some latin inscriptions in Pompeii
SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml · 17 pts · 182d
Fun fact: The 2000 in Windows 2000 denotes that it was released 2000 years ago, meaning around the time of Emperor Augustus
folekaule@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 182d
Old and tired: use the release year in your product version.
New and exciting: increment all your past product versions as they age!
Your users will love it!
obinice@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 182d
Download Accelerator Plus, my beloved 🥰
selokichtli@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 181d
Ah, yes. That was the name. Then I changed it for DownThemAll! which still exists.
MathiasTCK@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 181d
Yes, everything on the on the page or linked to on the page or wrapped in flash tyvm.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 182d
I remember figuring out how to boot my computer late at night to resume downloads then shut down before my dad woke up in the morning.
NOPper@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 7 pts · 182d
I took some super easy college night courses just so I could sit on their network and download floppy after floppy of Doom WADs without spending my precious minutes.
X@piefed.world · 6 pts · 182d
^ this person downloads
moonshadow@slrpnk.net · 11 pts · 182d
Who out here still using jdownloader?
selokichtli@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 181d
I still do, for some things (lists of huge files). Well, I did recently, but got deleted just last week.
tonytins@pawb.social · 10 pts · 182d
I still use a download manager for the bigger files. Just to be safe.
SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml · 5 pts · 182d
I use a torrent manager which is practically the same thing
mr_anny@sopuli.xyz · 5 pts · 182d
I use them on slow sources as they open up to 8 dl streams simultaneously.
originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com · 2 pts · 182d
but zmodem can totally restart an interrupted tx!
MoonRaven@feddit.nl · 8 pts · 181d
Download Accelerator Plus.
percent@infosec.pub · 6 pts · 182d
I remember pulling an all-nighter to make sure my Internet stayed connected and stable long enough to download Netscape Navigator. I think it was like 18MB. Previous attempts failed, and I didn't know of any download managers back then
Kolanaki@pawb.social · 6 pts · 181d
I don't remember ever needing one for concurrent downloads, just to resume one if the connection was lost or something happened. But I also don't remember downloading anything prior to being on Windows 95. 🤷♂️
I remember downloading like 20-30 parts of a single thing and having the task bar at the bottom just be full of download windows.
58008@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 182d
FlashGet was my jam back in the early 2000s. Then one day it downloaded malware a malicious third party had somehow managed to inject into its updater 😒
DmMacniel@feddit.org · 5 pts · 182d
And I shall raise you this neat program
funkajunk@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 182d
Flashget was tight
myszka@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 182d
You don't now?? I think concurrency is still unavailable in modern browsers by default
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 182d
Well, you've got another think coming.
myszka@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 182d
Okay I've confused concurrency for parallel downloading. The latter browsers still don't do by default. And that's the reason I used to use download managers