Your earliest memories of the Internet?
Discussion
Define "the Internet". As sweaty 14-year-olds, me and a mate were regulars on some Compuserv MUD in the late 80s (the highlight was when we managed to get some dirty-sexy-talk with a girl who in hindsight was almost certainly a 40-stone trucker from Norwich). Them were the days, we were only allowed an hour on the dialup - 2600 baud! - after 10pm when nobody else wanted to use the phone.
I'm evidently a bit younger than you, but my clearest memory was the desktop computer in the corner of the living room, where we used to play an online game called Runescape. This would be mid to late 90s, I would have been somewhere between 5 and 10. There were three of us, and we would be given thirty minute slots and swap around. Oh the drama when my mum or my dad needed to use the phone during one of those thirty minute slots ...
Around 98 or 99
Yahoo and Geocities were the big thing in my early days.
Back then the internet seemed so big - there was a specialist website for all sorts of forgotten things
Although I am sure there is more data now, the internet seems to be dominated dominated by a few big websites.
Yahoo and Geocities were the big thing in my early days.
Back then the internet seemed so big - there was a specialist website for all sorts of forgotten things
Although I am sure there is more data now, the internet seems to be dominated dominated by a few big websites.
My earliest memories of the internet would have been when I was 10 or 11 around 1995 and 1996.
Being really confused over why www.spurs.com didn’t take me to the Tottenham website.
The fact my sister and I both had machines and the battles that resulted over the single phone line into the house.
Later memories:
When still in the dial-up era, our ISP had a time limit on the connection meaning you would have to manually reconnect every 2 hours. It took 9 or 10 attempts for me to download the Tony Hawk Pro Skater demo in the time
MSN Messenger being life. When you got home from school, nothing else mattered.
Being really confused over why www.spurs.com didn’t take me to the Tottenham website.
The fact my sister and I both had machines and the battles that resulted over the single phone line into the house.
Later memories:
When still in the dial-up era, our ISP had a time limit on the connection meaning you would have to manually reconnect every 2 hours. It took 9 or 10 attempts for me to download the Tony Hawk Pro Skater demo in the time
MSN Messenger being life. When you got home from school, nothing else mattered.
I remember using Mosaic on some Sun workstations in a computer lab at university, which would have been either 1993 or 1994. Although it was so slow it was almost unusable after about midday as the US started to wake up and everything slowed down. Most other internet stuff like email and usenet was done on green-screen terminals, which were a lot faster to use once you got the hang of shortcut keys. I seem to recall Pine being the email client of choice at the time.
Around 1995 I bought my own PC (first computer of any description) and putting a modem in it with AOL. I don't remember having any particular difficulties making it work as such, but I remember Joanna Lumley saying 'You've got post!' every time a new email arrived. Which back then was about once or twice a day, before everyone else got email and then the spam tsunami started.
Around 1995 I bought my own PC (first computer of any description) and putting a modem in it with AOL. I don't remember having any particular difficulties making it work as such, but I remember Joanna Lumley saying 'You've got post!' every time a new email arrived. Which back then was about once or twice a day, before everyone else got email and then the spam tsunami started.
Probably as soon as I started working on computers in 1988 - although it was all dial-up through an acoustic coupler to some BBS or other.
Even a year or two later the bank I was at had a stack of 2400baud Hayes modems for their nightly transaction uploads.
It was the 'internet' but not as we know it
Even a year or two later the bank I was at had a stack of 2400baud Hayes modems for their nightly transaction uploads.
It was the 'internet' but not as we know it
About 1993 or 1994 my mate who was a computer service engineer showed me this thing called the internet. I said i really should learn about this.
He handed my a carrier bag and told me to hold it open. In went a motherboard, a graphics card, a disk drive and plenty of other bits. He then threw in some screws, cables etc. Oh and you'll need this, a whole load of 3.5 floppies (windows 3.1) then put the bag in a case and said send me an email. I went down to his car and got a monitor out the boot and set off home.
I worked in electronic assembly at the time so putting the bits together was easy enough. A week later I sent him an email. That same PC has after many upgrades (triggers broom style) has evolved into the PC I am typing this on. There are none of the original parts in it anymore but its really still the same PC
He handed my a carrier bag and told me to hold it open. In went a motherboard, a graphics card, a disk drive and plenty of other bits. He then threw in some screws, cables etc. Oh and you'll need this, a whole load of 3.5 floppies (windows 3.1) then put the bag in a case and said send me an email. I went down to his car and got a monitor out the boot and set off home.
I worked in electronic assembly at the time so putting the bits together was easy enough. A week later I sent him an email. That same PC has after many upgrades (triggers broom style) has evolved into the PC I am typing this on. There are none of the original parts in it anymore but its really still the same PC
First as a student from 1989 to 1992 - mainly e-mail and usenet groups (text only, no HTML).
Then about '94 ish one of my mates set up an early ISP for dial-up users - and I laughed and said something like "People won't pay to have this 'Internet' thing in their homes". He's now worth many millions after selling the company a few years later. I learned my lesson from that!
I had dial-up at home from '97, at a time when the companies I was working for didn't have connections even for e-mail. I put the first internet connection into the firm I was working for in '99, giving them proper e-mail and access to the web.
Then about '94 ish one of my mates set up an early ISP for dial-up users - and I laughed and said something like "People won't pay to have this 'Internet' thing in their homes". He's now worth many millions after selling the company a few years later. I learned my lesson from that!
I had dial-up at home from '97, at a time when the companies I was working for didn't have connections even for e-mail. I put the first internet connection into the firm I was working for in '99, giving them proper e-mail and access to the web.
Altavista, 1996 - 13yr old - works experience with my Dad who was working for IBM at the time
Later that year we had Compuserve on the home PC with the cable extension reel trailing down the stairs to get online ... later swapping to AOL
Loved the chatrooms and met up with some filthy girls about the same age as me off the back of it ... ah the memories, and in fairness I think I was VERY lucky to not turn up and it be some big hairy arsed trucker
Later that year we had Compuserve on the home PC with the cable extension reel trailing down the stairs to get online ... later swapping to AOL
Loved the chatrooms and met up with some filthy girls about the same age as me off the back of it ... ah the memories, and in fairness I think I was VERY lucky to not turn up and it be some big hairy arsed trucker
At university in 1993 and seeing people in the computer lab on a bulletin board called Monochrome. I ended up getting an account and spending way too much time on there.
Amazingly it seems like it is still going
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monochrome_BBS
In 1996 I rented a house with 3 other nerds and we all had our own individual phone lines into the house. I was using Freeserve at the time on a 56K modem which I think cost 1p a minute. Our phone bills were around £100 each a month. Spent hours and hours on Yahoo! chat.
Eventually I got ADSL and discovered Kazaa, having to download each song individually.
Amazingly it seems like it is still going
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monochrome_BBS
In 1996 I rented a house with 3 other nerds and we all had our own individual phone lines into the house. I was using Freeserve at the time on a 56K modem which I think cost 1p a minute. Our phone bills were around £100 each a month. Spent hours and hours on Yahoo! chat.
Eventually I got ADSL and discovered Kazaa, having to download each song individually.
t?"1996 first year of High school. Our school was the first in the UK with full intranet throughout the building. It had been recently been rebuilt due to asbestos and Sun Micro systems EU headquarters are in the town. Sun supplied all the intranet kit for free.
There was a Sun microsystems room in the libary with one computer. I remember it had a 28" crt computer monitor.
There was a Sun microsystems room in the libary with one computer. I remember it had a 28" crt computer monitor.
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