What did you do when you first got the internet?

fifth · 20-10-2008 05:03PM

I used to hum along to the dial tone..

Used to put change in a jar to pay for the charges.. Guitar tabs, midi files, making my one sh1tty home pages..

and using chat rooms oh and I remember doras.ie!! What a load of crap!

AnonoBoy · 20-10-2008 05:06PM

Got the internet way back in the mid-90's. You had to browse with images off.

28k modem.

Visited the Beastie Boys website. Downloaded William Shatner songs.

Good times.

TerrorFirmer · 20-10-2008 05:08PM

Not exactly sure. The first proper use I had of the internet was in 1999 playing Unreal Tournament online.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_Tournament

I actually don't think any other game has come close to that great feeling of getting up at 5am on Saturday and Sunday morning to play UT online on the sly, then coyly disconnect as the parents started to rise hours later.

It all came to and end the following month with astronomical phone bills, coincidentally followed by our computer mysteriously falling down a flight of stairs. A friend of mine managed to get his bill up to 400 Irish pounds - to this day, close to a decade later, he still isn't allowed to use the household computer when he's home.

It was one of the first online FPS games that required neither a cd key or the original CD to play online so there was about 20 of us using the same copy....ah, a more innocent time.

Einstein · 20-10-2008 05:09PM

Porn? hell no, it'd show up on the phonebill!

Princess Consuela Bananahammock · 20-10-2008 05:12PM

Looked up info on Satanism for a book I was writing. Then the simpsons. Was in an internet cafe ca. 1996

Fozzie Bear · 20-10-2008 05:15PM

Typed the word "sex" into a search engine and waited....... and waited.......... and waited........feckin dial up, don't know how i managed in the days before broadband!

superfly · 20-10-2008 05:19PM

if i remember it kind of looked like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMLH_QyPTYM

paconnors · 20-10-2008 05:21PM

MagicMarker wrote: »

I only got the internet around 2000/2001, but i remember the first things i did was just google random words, and look for guitar tabs.

Porn wasn't an option, computer was in the kitchen:(

YOU'RE MA'S telephone number

Ruu_Old · 20-10-2008 05:23PM

superfly wrote: »

if i remember it kind of looked like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMLH_QyPTYM

So true! Mam I'm on the internet, stop dialling! :rolleyes:

BlitzKrieg · 20-10-2008 05:26PM

spent days trying to figure out how to get the original C&C working online

had a friend the other side of town wanted to play against, we would ring each other to exchange IP, hang up plug in net, connect go into C&C try and connect to each other...fail. Disconnect ring each other again get new IP's repeat process ad naseum. You might see the flaw a 10 year old didnt at the time

Wasnt until my dad came home with Red Alert a couple of months later that I got westwood online and discovered the world of lag. (28.8 k modem).

Xavi6 · 20-10-2008 05:26PM

Was just getting into the guitar so it was tabs for me. Also signed up to hotmail with an address that I cringe ever so slightly at now.

Mam always had to use the feckin phone when I was on :mad:

inforfun · 20-10-2008 05:37PM

Downloaded some "interesting" file.
And off i went to reinstall windows 98.
When back it was napster time.
Downlaoding a 4 mb song on dial up and then the horror... the person you were downloading from disconnected when you were on 98%

It BeeMee · 20-10-2008 05:58PM

Midi files
Tons and tons of crap midifiles.

MP3 hadn't been invented in those days. Even if they had, it was a 14.4k dial-up...

dsmythy · 20-10-2008 06:06PM

Saw it in a friends house. Typed in calender to see if it was true that you could look up anything on the internet. Then i typed in calendar.

Yeah i was young. Wierd how that memory sticks with me though.

AARRRGH · 20-10-2008 06:11PM

Xavi6 wrote: »

Also signed up to hotmail with an address that I cringe ever so slightly at now.

Back in 1995 my hotmail address was osamabinladen@hotmail.com

Thankfully I stopped using that e-mail address in the late 90's!

(I can't remember why I picked that address - probably because I thought the boldness of it was funny.)

Mark200 · 20-10-2008 06:14PM

I downloaded one of the first version of MSN Messenger and just talked to the few friends who also had it. Then I joined my first forum soon after

Karl Hungus · 20-10-2008 06:51PM

Counter Strike.

Sleepy · 20-10-2008 07:07PM

playboy.com, friend's pages, built my own webpage, guitar tabs, a radiohead chatroom called polyethylene, Yahoo Cool Pics, Microsoft Comic Chat etc.

Gummy Panda · 20-10-2008 07:08PM

Sleepy wrote: »

Microsoft Comic Chat etc.

that was awesome!

Bring back Comic Chat

BlitzKrieg · 20-10-2008 07:27PM

I never got a chance to get into microsoft comic chat

Would be cool to have it now. Screw home and second life! I want a 2D interactive chat world with speech bubbles!

Dunder Mifflin · 20-10-2008 07:27PM

Halflife 1 lan games at the local cafe followed by TFC when I got 56k because my computer was too crap to run Counterstrike.

samhail · 20-10-2008 07:34PM

i was on 28.8kbps. IRC in the day. i remember looking up guitar tabs alright... but i dont remember ever playing the guitar. used to love finding midi files and converting them to piano scores to play.

BlitzKrieg · 20-10-2008 07:44PM

Halflife 1 lan games at the local cafe

I remember playing Quake at my local internet cafe (down in the country boi!) me and 2 friends running around fragging each other.

I am very embarassed to admit we were such noobs that we were playing in the SP level select stage in quake the whole time, we never actually loaded up a proper multiplayer map or anything. Didnt know how or cared.

Alter-Ego · 20-10-2008 08:20PM

Looked up south park pictures and tomb raider cheats. That was 10 years ago. I was the toast of the backwater sh1thole i grew up in as i was the only person in my class with t'internet.

skyhighflyer · 20-10-2008 08:28PM

Doing a search for the Spice Girls and ending up with porn. In fact, doing anything at all on the net back then seemed to result in porn - remember the days of the random, unstoppable deluge of porn pop-ups? You could be looking at something as wholesome as knitting patterns for jumpers and then get a pop up of some young one spreading her flange on your computer screen.

Oh, and your computer getting nuked by BonziBuddy or Gator.

Those were the days :P

Acacia · 20-10-2008 08:37PM

Used to rely on Encarta for interesting info before the internet, so the first few times I used the internet I thought it would just be like a giant encyclopedia...then came the random porn pop-ups and my innocence was lost...also thought I would be arrested for looking at them, even though it was accidental! :pac:

I think I looked up mostly music and Harry Potter websites. Though I wasn't allowed on it much, because my ma was worried about how expensive it would be.

nyarlothothep · 20-10-2008 08:41PM

Radiohead stuff, RATM chatroom

samhail · 20-10-2008 08:42PM

#phishtank @ irc.indigo.ie ?

The guy · 20-10-2008 08:55PM

A tayto website, it was just a single page.

It was 2000 or so.

Gummy Panda · 20-10-2008 08:57PM

The guy wrote: »

A tayto website, it was just a single page.

It was 2000 or so.

you heard the rumour about signing up for a free box of hunky dorys didn't ya?

What did you do when you first got the internet?

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