I understand that modems used the telephone line to transmit and decode sound into data, but I don’t understand why that noise everyone remembers needed to happen. You didn’t hear sound when you were loading a web page even though sound was being decoded by you modem… what was the purpose for it on start-up?
Edit: Autocorrect typo
In: Technology
When you start your car, all the lights on the dashboard light up before you turn the engine over. This shows you the electrical system is working, and allows you to check each individual light is working even if its specific fault is not present (i.e. you can diagnose if it’s the bulb faulty, or an genuine fault). By making the noise during dial-up you can hear that something is happening, i.e. you can hear that your end and the other end are making some sort of connection. You can’t understand what they’re saying to each other, but you know they’re talking. If there was no noise, you wouldn’t know if they were talking or if you were dialling a dead number, or you’re line was faulty. Once connected the noise turns off as you really don’t want to continue hearing anything.
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