My own private ATDT relief was the day our phone company upgraded their systems and I could finally start using ATDT instead of ATDP, making the dial time so much shorter and significantly raising the chance to be the first dialer when someone finally logged off from any of the heavy loaded BBS lines from the redialing list.
Communications was really sucks, but we were lucky enoguh not to know it back then.
I remember always tuning the DTMF timings (duration/spacing) to make the dialing as fast as the phone company could reliably allow. Even to this day when I hear the DTMF tones playing at the default speed, it pains me and makes me want to go adjust the dial command (ATDT) to speed things up.
I also had a USR Courier with a button on the front that could be reprogrammed to do anything. I reprogrammed it to dial my favorite BBS, so I could turn on the computer, press the button, and by the time AUTOEXEC.BAT had finished and Telix was launched, I'd already be connected.
I used it as a ringtone, not long ago, inspired by a posting on HN that described in details what the different sounds mean.
1. Reactions were not good, even from my geekiest acquaintances.
2. Worst, turns out this sounds are all around us, from fax machines to POS communication for credit card verification. I became too aware of the sounds and false-positively checking my phone too often so I changed.
Communications was really sucks, but we were lucky enoguh not to know it back then.