Spent 3 hours trying to download a wallpaper from GeoCities in 1997

I remember this one time I was on GeoCities looking for a cool Final Fantasy VII wallpaper for my 15-inch CRT monitor. The site had all these tiny thumbnail images and I clicked one that looked awesome. But the full version was like a 300 KB JPEG and I was on a 28.8k modem. It took about 8 minutes to load and just as it got to 98% the connection dropped. I had to start all over again from that lady's angelic-voices-angelic-voices homepage. After the second failed attempt I figured out I could right-click the thumbnail and save it directly, but it came out all tiny and pixelated. In total I wasted about 3 hours cycling through different GeoCities neighborhoods like Tokyo and Area51 before I gave up. Has anyone else rage-quit a download back then because of a stupid disconnect?

2 comments

2 Comments

nora_barnes17d ago

That 98% drop was soul-crushing, wasn't it? I still get twitchy thinking about the sound of that modem disconnecting.

the_amy18d ago

oh man that 98% drop was the WORST. i used to think people were exaggerating about how bad dial-up was but after living through that exact scenario with a Zelda wallpaper i totally get it now.