Happy Birthday Internet! (In Ireland anyway...)

Gyalist · 15-05-2012 10:42AM

Ben D Bus wrote: »

Back in 1986 (yes 1986) I had my first experience of the internet when I got my first email address. Along the lines of bdbus@vax1.tcd.ie.

We got a PC with dialup in the office in the mid 90's but I waited until 2000 to get a Y2K compliant ( ) Dell at home.

My first experience of the internet was similar to yours but a year later. In my case Imperial College London in 1987.

sink · 15-05-2012 10:44AM

It was around 1996. Windows 95 with internet explorer. Indigo was our ISP, AltaVista the search engine of choice. It was only about 2 years later when we got an ISDN line and Unreal Tournament came out, that's when I became addicted.

Fromthetrees · 15-05-2012 10:48AM

My dad got me the web pal around 2000, sent an email to the radio station that first night and my name was called out and they played the song I asked for. :eek: I had made it in this world. :cool:

Nothingbetter2d · 15-05-2012 10:54AM

we got dialup back in 1994 and it was a whopping 33.6k connection lol

back when windows 95 was in beta

my first computer ever was back in 1983 when dad brought home a sinclair spectrum zx 16k
it was basically one step up from an abacus hehe

DeadParrot · 15-05-2012 11:00AM

Lycos Chat, altavista, ICQ, custom IRC clients, anglefire web pages.
Ah the web...

melekalikimaka · 15-05-2012 11:10AM

reemember audiogalaxy, was the business, allowed resuming.

omahaid · 15-05-2012 11:14AM

1996 on IOL. I also remember being booted off Esat no-limits - never forgive never forget!!!!!!!!!!!

TeresaDarling · 15-05-2012 11:30AM

I still have the iolfree address, I have taken pics of the original discs, a disc for everything and each took hours to load,I don't know how to add them on here

Somewhere I have a picture of the original modem, it weighed the same as a small elephant and was about the same size

Sister Assumpta · 15-05-2012 11:41AM

Summer 1997. My mother used to work and leave us at home alone, and she'd have to keep ringing the house from her desk to knock off our internet because it was quite expensive and was tying up the house phone.

My best memory from this time was the dial-up symphony that the modem would make when you were connecting to the internet. I still play the entire sequence in my head:pac:

Nothingbetter2d · 15-05-2012 12:09PM

Sister Assumpta wrote: »

Summer 1997. My mother used to work and leave us at home alone, and she'd have to keep ringing the house from her desk to knock off our internet because it was quite expensive and was tying up the house phone.

My best memory from this time was the dial-up symphony that the modem would make when you were connecting to the internet. I still play the entire sequence in my head:pac:

do you mean this tune?

Cooliagh · 20-05-2012 09:14AM

Does any1 remember the Unison boxes that plugged into your telly & used the dial up connection to show the internet on your telly? I remember winning one in a competition & being delighted because it was my first internet experience at home. Was a reeeeaaaallllyyy slow connection & didn't show any pictures!

Stavro Mueller · 20-05-2012 09:31AM

omahaid wrote: »

1996 on IOL. I also remember being booted off Esat no-limits - never forgive never forget!!!!!!!!!!!

I had that IOL No Limits package at home as well but escaped the cull because I was away a lot during the week and simply wasn't online. For those who aren't ancient enough to remember, it means that for a flat fee of twenty quid a month you could spend as much time as you wanted on the internet in the evenings and weekends. Except Esat/IOL moved the goalposts and terminated without warning the accounts of a load of their customers who they felt were online for too long :mad::mad:

Eircom certainly benefited from the early days of the internet because for quite a while there was no cheap way of going online during business hours

omahaid · 20-05-2012 10:05AM

Ah ya, it was IOL No Limits, wasn't it. I also remember buying internet access in a box from IOL. £15 a month as I recall + phone costs got you access. I also remember setting up my first internal modem, hadn't a fucking clue what I was doing, I was 15 or 16 I think, miracle the thing worked at all. All I remember thinking was "WTF is an IRQ???"

meoklmrk91 · 20-05-2012 10:18AM

Early 2002 I'd say by the time we got our first computer, spent years begging my parents for it, I lived on the computer in school while everyone else in my class had one. They got us one for Christmas, then getting the Internet was another battle. Manys an evening spent on the phone with eircom in india trying to find out why our bloody Internet wouldn't connect. Oh and we had some serious bills too!

Must have been around 2007- 2008 before we got broadband, it's hard to believe it wasn't that long ago, I can't remember life before broadband, iPhones etc. the screen age as I like to call it, those CRT monitors were a bitch though, still think they are the reason I am half blind.

saa · 20-05-2012 10:47AM

My Dad took about a year to get the internet 2004 ish, the library had the internet from 2002, I remember sitting there with Yahoo open not being able to think of anything to search, then when I got the hang of it I managed to read a whole heap of library books while waiting for each page to load, I was about 11 at the time but I'm glad of that I would of hated to be a young one on the internet with youtube, bebo, facebook and all that I could of really made a show of myself.

Morag · 20-05-2012 11:31AM

1993 logging in from DCU to TCD and out on to the web or what it was back then.
Then in DK RTC, needing to run winsock to get netscape to run on the network.

When I moved in my own place after college we had a TiNet account and I was playing on
the Cloud Quake server back in 1997, have always had internet in the house from then.

mike65 · 20-05-2012 11:54AM

Wish I could recall but it was around 1996/7, a 33.6k modem (I could have gone for the 28.8 but was wiling to spend the few extra bob) it would be about three years before I upgraded to a v90 56.6 (now you're cooking!) and I had that for flipping years such was the price of actual broadband.

looksee · 20-05-2012 11:57AM

I can't remember exactly but it must be 15 years ago - I remember using it for the work I was doing, but having to go to somewhere in town if I wanted to upload large pieces of artwork. It was early enough that I got just my name@eircom.net for an email address (and a couple strange names of Yahoo addresses to hide behind! - which I have since dumped.)

Happy Birthday Internet! (In Ireland anyway...)

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