Your first time on the Internet

Can you remember back that far? What did you do?

From home, sent a message to work as a test.

My first time was at PSU back in '96. I think I checked out Yahoo.com

Do the old Bulletin Boards count? or the internet as we know it today?

bobtomay said:

Do the old Bulletin Boards count? or the internet as we know it today?

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I think I first started using Compu$erve back in the late 80's with my Commodore64 and a 300 baud modem. Back then, I think is was something like 6¢ a minute and people were racking up several hundred dollars in monthly charges! The CB simulator (which is where I spent most of my time!) had a separate deal that was something like $40-50 a month.

The first actual Internet was with my Tandy 4000 386SX computer in the early 90's. I still had to connect by modem, but I am pretty sure we were up to at least 2400 baud! The city where I lived provided FREE Internet service, but it was all command-line based. If you wanted a GUI connection, that was something like $10 a month!

bobtomay said:

Do the old Bulletin Boards count? or the internet as we know it today?

Click to expand...

Shhhhh you don't want to show your age.

*****************

For me it was a very long time ago like in the 90's when netscape navigator was the big cheese of the browsers. And believe it or not it was looking to learn about HTML. I know when I was in school back then I was mad keen into playing with raw HTML code. And I was pretty good at it.

But then HTML 2, 3 and 4 came along with all the new codes and syntax and I never kept up and now I doubt I could make a website from the raw code anymore. Mind you with iweb/dreamweaver I would not want to.

And yes I remember the hypertext and hypercard apps I used to have on my old Mac at home. And I thought they were really swisho at the time. yeah that's showing my age too.

bobtomay said:

Do the old Bulletin Boards count? or the internet as we know it today?

Click to expand...

If that's the case, my first "online" experience was on a local BBS called "TUSK" at 2400baud, back in '92.

I can't remember the specific instance but I do remember my elementary school getting it for the first time. Only three computers had it and you had to get scheduled in to use it. I believe it was closely monitored and it was strictly for research purposes.

At home, I remember early experiences with using it. In particular, I remember trying to build a website with GeoCities (a part of my nostalgia died when Yahoo closed down GeoCities).

First time I used the internet, getting online took about ten minutes. 1 minute to dial the number, 9 minutes to load the home page (Google). I won't mention that this was on a Compaq that weighed about 10 pounds, and didn't run Windows 98 too well. Oops, I just did. ;P

If we're talking first time with Internet including BBS..then it was back in '91..with a few local ones "Q-Continuum", "Bits N Bytes" stick out in my memory..and then '93 when I had my own BBS for a couple of years..progressing through the 2400 bps modem to 33.6K baby..

With my own BBS that got me involved with FIDOnet..I use PCBoard as the software (for anyone that knows/cares.. )

I used to use a lot of Gopher, Telnet and FTP for a lot of "Demo" files..music and other things..quite fun..my father used to work for BBN back, so I was exposed to Unix/Xenix very early..

First browser I used was Mosaic in college and used Altavista and Yahoo for search engines..

Regards

Hmm, first time was in 2002, because I had no computer until then. First thing I did was go to a DVD sales site and buy stuff!

Mid 90's at a friend's house. He had AOL (I was jealous). We lurked on a few chat rooms and looked at profiles to meet girls. I met some one who became one of my closest friends that night. She turned out to be too young for me but we became friends. I traveled 3 states to visit her and her family several times. They are like my 2nd family now. Back when it was safer to meet people from online. I would NEVER do it now!

cwa107 said:

My first time was at PSU back in '96. I think I checked out Yahoo.com

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Then down to the "Rathskeller" for a brewski!

- Nick

Okay, I remember this vividly. Back in... 2006? A friend gave us a Dell Dimension 8100... Used it for a couple months to play disk games, then we wanted to get online. We got GWI Dial-Up. The first thing I did was type in Nick.com "Had been burned into my brain from years of commercials" and what's the first thing I see? (Warning: This site requires Service Pack 2 to be installed to view content) (Click here to download service pack 2) I click it and Microsoft doesn't have the download available anymore? I worked for years to try to get that computer to at least load a web page... Never happened. Finally about 4 months ago, I traded it towards my iBook. Never again will I own a PC.

Wow the days of 56k and the sound of dial up. >_>" Used it for mostly chatting on Yahoo.

I hosted a Wildcat! BBS for a few years. My friend and I had a budding enterprise removing certain lines of machine language code from a popular game developers products. A C & D letter from the software developer along with a follow up call from the F.B.I. brought it to an extremely quick halt. Actually made enough scratch to buy an external SCSI enclosure that housed 120MB worth of hard drives. (4 drives - total cost around $1500).

Sold $5000 worth of 8mhz XTs at the 1987 Hamvention. Thought I was rich!!

OH man!

I guess it was 1996. We had been using computers since 1987, but one was an old IBM 286 and then a Packard-Bell with windows 3.0 and no modem. Gramps bought me a new quantex computer in 1996 with all the bells and whistles, including the lightning fast 33.6kbps modem!

IIRC, the first website I ever went to was mtv.com to check out how it worked. Dialing up, of course, using swbell.net.

Then I looked at lots of UFO pictures, and, after the family went to sleep, lots of naked ladies.

way back in kindergarten when we would use it to send messages to our pen-pals with our teachers supervision!

CrimsonRequiem said:

Wow the days of 56k and the sound of dial up. >_>" Used it for mostly chatting on Yahoo.

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I used it whenever my parents weren't on the phone. However, I didn't get my first internet-equipped computer until I was in 8th grade (2005). I had a custom built PC, and a USB wireless receiver connecting to our new wifi setup. I remember the dial up sound though…nostalgia...

Who remembers the good ol' days of WinPopup? That was the best tool for getting around IM blocks at school. Then the school moved to some Novell solution (probably NetWare) and we used their messaging service.