When did you first connect to the internet?

[chrono1081]

I remember these days of agony.

Ever since I was little (back in the 80s) I wanted a computer. My parents did not think they were necessary and claimed that they could not afford one.

When the big internet boom of the 90s hit, EVERYONE I knew had a computer, but all of them were bored with the internet and didn't care about it (or had strict parents who bought into the hacker/virus hype and wouldn't let anyone touch it) so no internet for me

In 1996 my aunt gave us a hand me down computer, but it was so slow it couldn't do anything on the internet.

FINALLY in 1998 my parents got a web tv. It was slow, ******, but at least I had internet! I was on it all day and it made me want a computer even more.

Finally in 1999 I begged my parents to buy me a computer on their credit card, and I would make the payments. They said no but surprised me anyway and got it for me (although I still had to pay the full $2600).

What sucked is the stupid-ass Gateway 2000 sales rep sold them the bottom of the barrel so it was barely useable without costly upgrades but oh well I finally had one!

Now today I have no clue how many computers I've had/have. They're all over the place in my house or at friends houses running all kinds of OSs. Everything I do living wise and hobby wise (except snow boarding) revolves around computers.

Any my parents thought they weren't useful...

 

[costabunny]

Back in those days - ouch the pain. 1200Bps MoDem on my Amiga2000 mostly BBS connections. (am going to guess about '92)

Then progressed to a 14,400 MoDem (remember the old US Robotics Pocket Rocket series?) on my PC (yuk) - used a host of AOL freebie disks before moving on to the first ISDN connection in my area (dual link to get 128KBps). everyone I knew back then though my connection was the nutz!

ahh how I miss you napster......

 

[Corndog5595]

I honestly can’t remember how old I was or what I was doing.

I remember seeing commercials for like AOL 7 or something like that. We had an old Windows 95 tower.

 

[Giuly]

1998 or 1999, using one of these nasty looking modems:

56k with ~14kb/s raw downloading power Compared to the 50MBit of today, laughable. I switched soon to 64/128k ISDN, using that until the mid-2000's, then switched to 6/16/50MBit/s, as they became available.

 

[notjustjay]

So my dad worked at a company that let him telecommute from home, using an actual DEC VT220 terminal (you know how all the terminal apps have a "VT100 emulation mode"? This was the real thing!) and it was connected to our phone line using a 1200 baud modem. Text would scroll onto the screen about as fast as you could read it. In fact my first exposure to computers -- before the Apple ][, before the Mac SE, before the IBM PCjr -- was with this terminal connected to the mainframe at dad's work. My idea of a computer game was "guess the number between 1 and 100", which was a script written in a language called REXX. I must have been between 6-8 years old at the time. It didn't take long before I knew how to log in using his terminal -- turn it on, pick up the phone, dial the special number, when I heard the beeping, press "connect" on the modem. I knew a few commands for game scripts that I could play.

Around when I was 12 I discovered that I could use dad's terminal to dial up local BBSes, and not just his company. We had a monthly computer "rag" that had a BBS phone listing in the back, so I quickly started getting on a bunch of them, chatting with other people via FidoNet. I had no actual PC at the time -- just the dumb terminal -- but we bought a 386 PC in short order and I begged my dad to get me a modem too so I didn't have to keep using the VT220. I was so excited the day we drove to the post office to pick up our mail-order parcel: a 2400 baud modem of my very own!

In 1993 or so, I discovered one of the bigger BBSes in the city. It had 12 phone lines! And you could chat with the people who were currently dialed in on the other lines! You could even set your "WHO banner" to a clever message, much like today's custom status updates on various IM services. This BBS charged for access -- something like $50/year for 2 hours a day. And eventually it offered a gateway to the rest of the internet, offering services like archie, gopher, Lynx, and limited Usenet groups. I remember not being too impressed at first -- there was a lot of delay between sending out your requests and getting a response back from the remote server, and there frankly wasn't a whole lot to do on the 'net back then.

I was ecstatic the day that my dad brought home a 14400 bps modem from work.

At the same time, the National Capital Freenet project launched, which was an initiative to get people connected online (again, still on text-only screens like the VT220 terminal). Now "average people" had FREE access to email, Lynx, and the ability to telnet to limit servers like MUD games. You could dial into their pool of phone lines (mostly 9600 bps), or go to the local library and line up for a terminal there.

In 1995 I did a high school co-op with a company that had a high speed Internet link. The high speed ISDN line offered a big, whopping 128Kbps link (but of course it was shared with the entire company). The first websites I remember visiting were Yahoo and the IMDB. We used the NCSA Mosaic browser, and eventually Netscape.

My co-op job was to learn HTML and convert a bunch of Word documents into HTML documents (tables, formatting, and all) for uploading to the company intranet. Everyone was so impressed that I knew how to "program web pages" and I was assured that I could have a great career if I kept these skills up!

I started university in 1996, which also gave me access to the university network servers -- again, more text-based internet services. I also signed onto an ISP for dial-up access to the internet from my home computer, still running at 14400 bps. I think the going rate was $25/month for 50 hours of dial up access. I didn't figure I'd need that much time, so I bought a pay-as-you-go plan -- I believe it was something like $69 for 125 hours. With conservative use (relying on Freenet and my school servers whenever I could), I could make that block of time last for months before buying another block.

I also started to play on a MUD in 1997 and got so addicted that I had to quit in late 1998 because my university marks were seriously dropping.

In 1998 I finally bought my own PC, and I bought a 56K fax/modem with it. I'm trying to remember when we finally made the move from dial-up to high speed cable internet -- I think it was 2001 or so.

 

[ohaithar]

I loved the game.

Wow, those are some awesome game graphics right there

 

[QuarterSwede]

Back in those days - ouch the pain. 1200Bps MoDem on my Amiga2000 mostly BBS connections. (am going to guess about '92)

Then progressed to a 14,400 MoDem (remember the old US Robotics Pocket Rocket series?) on my PC (yuk) - used a host of AOL freebie disks before moving on to the first ISDN connection in my area (dual link to get 128KBps). everyone I knew back then though my connection was the nutz!

ahh how I miss you napster......

I think I started on a 28.8k, could've been a 14.4 though. Either way it was dog slow. And I was definitely on the BBSs before html was around. It was definitely a different experience than what the young'in's are used to today. And those AOL discs. All those AOL discs. I had stacks of them.

 

[oblomow]

I think I started on a 28.8k, could've been a 14.4 though. Either way it was dog slow. And I was definitely on the BBSs before html was around. It was definitely a different experience than what the young'in's are used to today. And those AOL discs. All those AOL discs. I had stacks of them.

28k8? Luxury!
we had a 9600 baud modem. (and lived in a hole in the road).
And nowadays? 100Mb fibre to the home. But we were happy back then.
(search for 4 yorkshiremen, monty python)

 

[Jazwire]

1994, via Prodigy .

 

[*LTD*]

Used it at work and around libraries and such in 1996 or so. But used BBS services since the 80's a kid, like Quantumlink.

Got my first home connection to the "internet" as *we* know it now around March 1997 with Netcom. Called my buddy up and he freaked out. The next day he was online as well.

What a trip.

Oh, and my first ever "operating system." LOVED IT.

I know that I did a lot of school papers and projects GeoWrite, GeoPaint, GeoPublish, etc. There was even a fontpack called GeoFont. I had the entire suite.

 

[Peace]

Around 1990 connecting to various BBS's and Compuserve.

1989 for me. Used to love those BBS's !!

I had a killer 1400 baud modem too.

 

[Sankersizzle]

I discovered persiankitty a year later. my life was never the same again.

YES! I remember this too. I discovered porn like 2 hours after connecting to the internet for the first time in like 1999 (when I was 9). We used to print out pictures and take them to school to compare and contrast.

Man, those were the days.

 

[Angelo95210]

In 1997 from my room at my parents, with a 14k modem and a Hewlett Packard PC with a 486 at 50 MHz.

 

[Jason Beck]

I miss coming home from high school and looking at my server and seeing how many people logged on to my bbs. I had a user base of about a thousand people over two years. Not too shabby for just a kid! Just people from all over San Diego. Then when I got the net in... 95-96 I rant my board through winfossil and virtual modem and telnetted my board. hahah loved the Swedes that would logon to it. It was great fun in those days.

BBS's were where it was at man. It all felt like a little community, outside of the norm that regular people were not aware of. Dialing into a moderately popular multinode BBS was always fun, and chatting.

Oh and this.





------A puff of white cloud appears, and lo you are granted with the presence of the sysop!------`'`;`,

[Jbeck] 1:14pm: Hey dude whats up?
[Sysop] 1:14pm: Not alot, just working on some Ansi art in AcidDraw.
[Sysop] 1:14pm: Planets TEOS is down, I replaced it with LORD II
[Jbeck] 1:14pm: Nice!


Yah I miss those days! I wish I kept my board in a zip or something. I lost track of the backup a few years ago. I used to be a member of a few Ansi art and Ascii art groups, and used to frequent #Ansi on EfNet.

Now it is just forums for me. I miss BBS and Irc though. Good times!

 

[Counterfit]

93-ish, checking out Nintendo's page on AOL. I think my first taste of the real-deal web was probably around 94/95 or so. If I recall, we started out with a 14.4k modem, then made the big upgrade to 56k! Didn't help much on an LC520. What did help a huge amount was having a brother who was really into computers. We were ahead of the curve, in the beginning. When most kids my age were just getting computers, we had already had one for about 6 years or so.

1998 or 1999, using one of these nasty looking modems:

56k with ~14kb/s raw downloading power Compared to the 50MBit of today, laughable. I switched soon to 64/128k ISDN, using that until the mid-2000's, then switched to 6/16/50MBit/s, as they became available.

Before I moved next door and put a WiFi card in my grandmother's ThinkPad, she was on NetZero for about 8 months. I do not miss dialup.



No, I am not cuddling with my FiOS modem.

28k8? Luxury!
we had a 9600 baud modem. (and lived in a hole in the road).
And nowadays? 100Mb fibre to the home. But we were happy back then.
(search for 4 yorkshiremen, monty python)

Bourgeois scamp! I had to carry TCP packets by hand! In the snow! Uphill!

 

[hexonxonx]

1993. Connected to a local BBS and thought it was amazing that I could download a .jpg or.gif on about 20 seconds or even longer for larger photos.

That was also the year that I discovered Genie, AOL and Compuserve. I kind of miss those days, some fun times.

 

[oblomow]

Bourgeois scamp! I had to carry TCP packets by hand! In the snow! Uphill!

You had TCP packets? Luxury. We only had UDP...

 

[2056]

I think it was 1998 and we had a local ISP that would crap out a lot. Oh, those were the days.. when I was amazed by things like e-mail and slow 56k modems.

 

[HBOC]

netscape was the big browser (and excite I think..) when i first started using the internet.. earlyish 90's at some point

 

[dmr727]

Used it at work and around libraries and such in 1996 or so. But used BBS services since the 80's a kid, like Quantumlink.

Wow - Quantum Link brings back some memories. My good friend had a C64, and we used to frequent a graphical world called Club Caribe (which was part of Quantum Link). I remember his parents' scolding us one day because we had run up more than $300 worth of long distance charges in a month of playing.

Also, my Dad had a CompuServe account that I used a lot, and of course smaller BBSs were all the rage back then too. In the early 90s, I went through a number of graphical on-line services like AOL, eWorld, and Prodigy.

As far as the internet is concerned, I think usenet, e-mail, and the web were my first forays into it - probably in the mid-90s or so.

 

[DylanLikesPorn]

netscape was the big browser (and excite I think..) when i first started using the internet.. earlyish 90's at some point

I loved Netscape Navigator. I'll always remember their animated logo. And Altavista was really big then, it helped me a lot in the early days when I was searching for porn.

Netscape died when they released the bloated P.O.S. known as Communicator. Anyhow, I switched to Mac afterwards and was happy with Internet Explorer and then Safari. Good times.

 

[FoxyKaye]

Same here. I got my first email/Unix shell account in late 1990 or early 1991, I can't remember exactly. I used it for a couple of BBS systems, MUDs, IRC, and Usenet. MUDs almost made me flunk out of school.

I first saw a browser around 1993 when one of my profs showed me this thing called Mosaic. He was very excited about being able to see non-ascii pictures.

+1

Got my first shell account in 1991 (with Pine email) at University. Moved up to Eudora 1.1 on a floppy disk in 1992, and started with Mosaic in 1993. I think there was a moment in time by 1993/94 when the University was giving us all three floppies: One with Eudora 1.2, one with Netscape 1.1, and one with the University connect utilities.

Never really got in to BBS stuff in the 80s, although I had an Apple //c which could theoretically connect to a 300 Baud modem.

 

[dXTC]

I loved Netscape Navigator. I'll always remember their animated logo. And Altavista was really big then, it helped me a lot in the early days when I was searching for porn.

Altavista was the search engine before Google came along; it was my go-to back in the day, and yes, it always seemed to have the more obscure, esoteric links in its database before Yahoo did.

 

[Lord Blackadder]

My early online history:

c. 1987
We had a TRS-80 as the family computer, equipped with a 300-baud modem. While I spent most of my time on it playing games like Pitfall and Pong, I occasionally logged on a BBSs with it...I was too young to be interested in text for too long though. But I remember it well enough.

c. 1989
Our school computer lab was equipped with the Apple ][e (around this time we got one at home too), and using this iconic machine I accessed the Cleveland Freenet, and discovered the wonders of email.

c. 1993
My first foray into the Worldwide Web with an early version of NCSA Mosaic running on an Apple IIgs. I still remember being blown away visiting NASA's website and downloading photos of outer space.

Around 1994 our family got our first Mac, and soon afterward we were on the internet in earnest.

 

[talmy]

I first used the Internet, back when it was ARPANET, about 1980-1981, and was amazed that I could send an EMAIL message overnight coast-to-coast! With Google Groups I was able to fine a USENET post I wrote in January 1983, although I'm sure it wasn't my first. Only services I had back in the 80's were mail (I was ucbvax!teklabs!tekchips!toma back then), FTP (no domain names when I started -- I had a list of IP addresses) and USENET. My first WWW experience was with the Mosaic browser on a UNIX system sometime mid-90's. I also had a Compuserve account in the mid 80's but that wasn't Internet-connected. I first used a modem in 1971, which ran at 134.5 bps. I also used a Xerox Alto in 1980, my first experience with a windowing OS and a mouse.