The day the internet was turned on

The day the internet was turned on

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soad

32,829 posts

175 months

Friday 28th August 2015
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I was late to the internet game. That awful dial-up tone.

If you fancy a nostalgic trip down memory lane, sign up for BT Broadband. Just as slow as 90's dial up! hehe

StevieBee

12,795 posts

254 months

Friday 28th August 2015
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The first time I had access to the internet was late 1994. The company I worked for sorted it for us to look into to determine if it was a fad or not.

Me and a colleague got first dibs. First website we searched for was 'Ferrari'. The second thing we searched was 'Naked Ladies'.

anothernameitist

1,500 posts

134 months

Friday 28th August 2015
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Had internet at work initially, got a home computer about 2002.

I used Cable TV for basic browsing and emails at home up until 2002

Piersman2

6,596 posts

198 months

Friday 28th August 2015
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Paddymcc said:
Otispunkmeyer said:
So from the sounds of things, smut was pretty much available on the net from the word go? Well played humanity.
Isn't this why VHS trumped all other media at the time and became the player of choice?
Yep. My father worked offshore in the early 80s and there came a time when the library of porn movies to be taken home was switched from being 8mm actual film to VHS tapes. Never again did he have to go out and rent a projector, he became an early adopter of the huge VideoStar VHS player. Betamax had not a chance after VHS became porn format of choice. laugh

Glad he did too, I could never work out how the 8mm film projector worked, but the VHS player was simple enough. smile

Chris Type R

8,018 posts

248 months

Friday 28th August 2015
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minimalist said:
I am quite pleased with myself that I was in early enough to get firstnamelastname@gmail.com
I remember when it had to be @googlemail.com due to a domain dispute.

soad

32,829 posts

175 months

Friday 28th August 2015
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I remember you could get those ISP software CDs.

Is AOL still going? type

theboss

6,878 posts

218 months

Friday 28th August 2015
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Ikemi said:
However not long after this, my parents agreed to upgrade to 512K ADSL! I think I was one of three people in my year group with ADSL ... £50/month, just for the Internet. Thanks parents! smile
To be fair though, if you were committed you could be spending >£100/month on dial-up charges. There were some free-to-dial services around not long before ADSL came out, but then when you could have 10 times the bandwidth 'always on' and no extra charges without needing a second phone line, £40/month (IIRC) was a bargain.

I signed up for it as soon as it was available in 2000, living in a student house so we could divide the cost between each of us... then setup a spare PC as a NAT router which swiftly became our own household porn cache.

We then had to learn how to deal with one bugger leaving downloads running all day/night smile

Tycho

11,554 posts

272 months

Friday 28th August 2015
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minimalist said:
I am quite pleased with myself that I was in early enough to get firstnamelastname@gmail.com
I have firstnamelastname1@gmail.com but do have a firstnamelastname@hotmail.com though and also a bigfoot email address!

Ste1987

1,798 posts

105 months

Friday 28th August 2015
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soad said:
I remember you could get those ISP software CDs.

Is AOL still going? type
Unfortunately, yes. They even still provide that stty desktop software! rolleyes

Mr Happy

5,694 posts

219 months

Friday 28th August 2015
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Pipex provided the first ISP service for me, although I subscribed to them about a week before the phone line was installed so spent 15 minutes in the phone box at the end of the street doing the signup!

Halcyon days using Netscape Navigator to get around on a mid-90s internet, where a Geocities 'homestead' (I think mine was something like /siliconvalley/7242 or /7424 but can't remember exactly) was seen to be cool, and everyone who was anyone had bannerxchange banner markup on their pages!

Still remember the first MP3 file I downloaded as well: Todd Terry presents Shannon - It's Over (Love). Seem to remember it took most of the evening...!

And my first experience of Linux, downloading 8x 1.44mb disk images for Slackware and another few for the Enlightenment WM only to get it installed, promptly realise that it was a completely different beast to MS-DOS/Windows and shortly revert back to Windows 95 (or it might have been 98).

BS30

1,097 posts

104 months

Friday 28th August 2015
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My very earliest memories of the Internet were in the school computer room.

Spending hours on a website called 'Boltblue' downloading ringtones and operator logos (anyone remember them??) to our Nokia phones.

And browsing a website offering convincing jpegs of what appeared to be Britney Spears cavorting in the buff.

ZOLLAR

19,908 posts

172 months

Friday 28th August 2015
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I remember using the internet in first year of Comprehensive (1998) but the first time I had access at home was a few days after Christmas 1999 when I logged on via one of these.



Even remember the first thing I researched, "Area 51" hehe I genuinely thought it might get me in trouble for some reason laugh

Loved that machine, had two of them (first one broke after a few years)
Should really get another for nostalgic reasons.

Zad

12,695 posts

235 months

Friday 28th August 2015
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I had the chance to get surname@gmail.com, but didn't think email had a very bright future at the time, so didn't bother, and plumped for a fairly short single word, just to say I had a gmail account.

My Internet started before I actually had the Internet. Being the nerd that I am, I got my amateur radio ticket while I was at school, and in 1989/90 I had something called packet radio, it was the cutting edge of radio amateur stuff back then, and allowed you to access local bulletin boards which then communicated among themselves and so you could email people at the other end of the country and read forum posts. the super geeky ones used TCP/IP over AX25, and so my very first IP address was assigned!

Despite doing a degree in IT, we didn't have net access! I had to wait until I was a postgrad in 1992 for that. I remember the day I logged in to find that something called MCSA Mosaic had been installed. At the time it just seemed an obvious and natural application, even then it was pretty apparent what the Internet was going to become. The only question was if BT and the other phone companies would see this and block it. Not even £2/hr dialup to Demon in London was enough to stop me. Local dialup happened, then 0800 access, and of course the mindblowing speed of 512kbit/s ADSL!



J4CKO

41,287 posts

199 months

Friday 28th August 2015
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Atari 2600 first in the late seventies, favourite was the Empire Strikes Back, and Smurf, strangely was pretty good, really loved my woodgrain 2600, want another but not the crappy reboxed one, thats just a st console rather than a piece of history.

Then my mate got a ZX81, went round and generally my impression was one of I think I will wait, plus his brother had Grandstand Astro Wars which was awesome.

I got a CBM 64 after saving up, I was a tenner short and Rumbelows in Bramhall were doing them for £189 instead of £199, joy of joys, got it earlier than expected but had no money for the tape deck, got some birthday money and found a cheaper alternative compatiable one from "Rotronics", half the price, only in those days there was no Amazon, no delivery the following day "allow 28 days for delivery", it took months, three or more but was actually pretty good, wa a great time, get some borthday money then off to Stockport to get some games, one memorable day I got Lazy Jones and Monty Mole which were both great, helped that my auntie worked at the library who lent out games and we got any that were missing inlay cards or boxes, had loads of them. Used to have to use it on a B and W telly most of the time apart from special occasions where I got to bring it downstairs.

Got a secondhand Spectrum from my paper round proceeds so had both so could referee in playground arguments.


Bought an Amiga 500 and was blown away, some amazing games for them, seemed such a leap over the 64.


Then, had to get a PC from college, bought an Amstrad PC 1640 with a HDD ! got it off the fat girl in our college course who bought it off the proper scrotey girl whos boyfriend was a proper dodgy character, pound to apenny it was nicked, seemed dismal after the Amiga, Hercules graphics, i.e. none really and a mono screen.


Internet came, for me in about 1995, I had scraped together enough money to buy a pc, or at least a collection of the cheapest/best performing bits I could lay my hands on, Cyrix 686 processor, a low end gfxcard, chinese knock off sound card, it was basically a machine for generating blue screens of death with Win 95, managed to get it so it worked most of the time and got my first 28.8 modem and got online, lots of dicking round with settings and stuff and much frustration but the online status popped up and there I was, on the internet !

I shouted the wife and she was singularly unimpressed and said it wouldn't catch on, I mentioned shopping and still not convinced, now she is on it all the bloody time !

I went mad one day and even though I was skint couldn't resist £120 worth of 56k modem, got in trouble for that one.

Bought another pc, using the new AMD Athlon which was a cartridge (which I have kept) and that served me well, the heady days of Unreal Tournament until 3am whilst getting utterly wkered.

I sold the AMD pc to my auntie when I wanted to upgrade, I forgot that a mate from work "Dickie the Perv" had built it for me and had told me that he had left a special treat on the HD, one of his legendary "Champagne" disks, basically the results of his trawl of the net saving porn pictures and burning them to CD's which he sold to non net enabled workmates at £10 a throw, as I had paid him for the machine he copied it to an innocuous sounding directory.


Anyway, I had a scan through and some of it was a bit on the strong side, some had scatological content but I completely forgot about it as it was in "C:\Windows\disk drivers" or something, I check the pc over, clear anything off my auntie didnt need to see (including internet history) and she has the pc, a month later she asks me to come round and clear some stuff off the hard drive, my blood runs cold, she had found the Champagne so I had to go round and delete the directory and try and explain it, she wasn't amused and still makes reference to it now, like 15 years later ffs !



Alex

9,975 posts

283 months

Friday 28th August 2015
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I had a very early "Pong" console and later an original wood effect Atari 2600.

My mate who lived across the road had a ZX80 and later got a ZX81. Another mate had a Dragon 32. We used to spend hours typing in listings from magazines.

My Dad was a lecturer at the local poly, so I used to go in at the weekends and learned to program BASIC on their Compucolor II PCs:



I actually managed to write a simple Space Invader game using the ASCII character set to draw the invaders and gun turret.

Dad had an Apple II at home and eventually we also got a BBC Model B (which I still have!).





Puggit

48,355 posts

247 months

Friday 28th August 2015
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Someone at uni showed me the online servers in the physics department, and we looked at Pamela Anderson nude pictures.

Yep, sussed out pretty quickly what the internet was for!

sooty61

686 posts

170 months

Friday 28th August 2015
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Chris Type R said:
I remember when it had to be @googlemail.com due to a domain dispute.
SWMBO still uses hers - refuses to switch to gmail for some reason she is not prepared to divulge.

JonRB

74,402 posts

271 months

Friday 28th August 2015
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So this thread has gone from your first connection to the internet, through to what your first computer was, and now what your first console was?

Outstanding.

Alex

9,975 posts

283 months

Friday 28th August 2015
quotequote all
Guilty, as charged.

My first "internet" was across JANET on Bradford University's CYBER mainframe terminals. We used it mainly for playing MUD.

A colleague and I used a modem and a Compuserve connection to download "interesting" pictures from newsgroups.

I think my first home real internet connection was on UKOnline dialup, and later Freeserve (remember them!).

djt100

1,734 posts

184 months

Friday 28th August 2015
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Paddymcc said:
Isn't this why VHS trumped all other media at the time and became the player of choice?
Yep, I wantched a program years ago about developments in home entertainment. And we have smut to thank for each one of them over time, From reel to reel to Blueray and internet in there somewhere. Effectively the program stated that if the big names in smut had not taken up xx formats of the years we would not be where we are now.