[michaelrpeskin]

I had forgotten about modem compression. Back in the BBS days when you had to upload files to get new files, you usually had a ratio (20 bytes download for every byte you uploaded). I would always use the PKZIP no compression option for the archive to upload because Z-Modem would take care of compression over the wire. So I didn't burn my daily time limit by uploading a large file and I got more credit for my download ratios.

I was a silly kid.

[EvanAnderson]

That's really clever and likely would have gone unnoticed by a lot of sysops!

[cpeterso]

Another download ratio trick was to use a file transfer client like Leech Modem, an XMODEM-compatible client that would, after downloading the final data block, tell the server the file transfer failed so it wouldn’t count against your download limit.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LeechModem

[michaelrpeskin]

That's awesome! I totally would have used that as a young punk if I knew about it.

[stavros]

That sounds like it can be fooled by making a zip bomb that will compress down to a few KB (by the modem), but will be many MB uncompressed. Sounds great for your ratio, and will upload in a few seconds.