One of my first jobs was working for a mom-and-pop dial-up ISP. I persuaded my mom to get an account with them when I saw them in a computer magazine. I did not even have a web browser! A little after that, they hired me.

One of the things we used to do when I first started was shuck modems. We would buy the consumer models, break open the plastic cases, pull the circuit boards out, and slide them into slots of custom enclosures. Then we would hand-assemble DB-to-ethernet adapters and plug them into serial controller banks.

We bought any and all modems, but the cheap models from US Robotics and Supra were really a game changer. The only tough part was that dealing with the slight differences in command differences on the client side needed to connect to the different modem types.