Classic, our first home computer was a Texas Instruments TI 80 in the 80's! I remember loading from external tape deck, all too well.
Guess, as you're from Texas, a TI shouldn't be a surprise, but I'm in England everyone here seems to remember the Amstrad, the BBC, the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and the Vic 20, not too many familiar with TI.
For the rest of your post - Fair enough, appreciate things aren't the same for all. Mine is over fibre so is fast, but Mega never goes above 10Mb/s for me, whereas Nopy reaches 25Mb/s - both on their basic options.
Difference circumstance for you, where stability over longer period of dl is important.
Firefox will allow you to restart dl's that either fail or cancel through timeout. Might be handy.
Anyway, wasn't intending to teach egg sucking, you know your own stuff far better than I.