1990's internet memories

Das Kitty · 04-08-2015 04:20PM

Earthhorse wrote: »

She used to call us?

Too bad she couldn't get through because you were holding up the line fapping to x-files porn.

04-08-2015 04:26PM

All my mum's batty old friends were complaining about never being able to get through on the telephone, so she got very strict about going online. You'd have to run and sneakily to pull out the landline cable when she was distracted, then hope to God she wouldn't hear this sound coming from the sitting room

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsNaR6FRuO0

Earthhorse · 04-08-2015 04:30PM

Das Kitty wrote: »

Too bad she couldn't get through because you were holding up the line fapping to x-files porn.

:eek:

Well, I never!

Go wash your mouth out with soap and water. Not that that's a fetish of mine or anything...

<_<

>_>

whiskeyman · 04-08-2015 04:34PM

Getting Aertel or Ceefax pages online.

The future had arrived!!

BrianD3 · 04-08-2015 04:52PM

I first heard about the internet in 1995 and first used it in Oct 1996 in university. There were a few rooms of PCs available for undergrads but only a minority of the machines had the internet in 1996. The PCs were 486s with Windows 3.1 which regularly crashed and there were frequent problems with floppy discs and losing work. The internet was as slow as hell. One of the first things I looked at were crappy pictures of military aircraft which took ages to load. Probably a Geocities or similar website. Naturally, I wanted to look at porn but thought there would be dire consequences if I did that.

Things got a lot better in college over the next few years - better PCs, Windows NT, better download speeds, every PC had the internet and massive quantities of porn were viewed. My own favorites were TGP (thumbnail gallery provider) sites such as Dr Bizzaro. No videos though - download speeds were still too slow.

Got the internet myself at home in 1998 on my blazing fast Pentium II 350 Mhz which cost nearly 2 grand. If I remember correctly, the dialup charges were in blocks of 15 minutes. It was a no no to go online before 6 pm as it was significantly more expensive. Also lots of complaints about hogging the phoneline and callers not being able to get through "for hours".

In the early 00s I worked in some places which were behind the times and where the internet was seen as a privilege or a dangerous distraction. Eg at one place everyone had a PC at their desk but which had email only, no web. To use the web you needed to go to a different office which had the only PC with access via a leased line. Spend more than a few minutes on that PC and your manager would be having a word. This is not much more than 10 years ago - seems nuts now.

fancy pigeon · 04-08-2015 05:05PM

Ruu wrote: »

Angelfire web pages! Things haven't changed much in rural Ireland. Just below 1 meg dl and that is a good day. WAP was funny as well.

WAP on a Nokia 7110 in 1999... No sites in Ireland! All that was there was the Nokia homepage and if you were lucky some world news

Then they brought out HSCSD, the DSL of WAP

branie2 · 04-08-2015 06:28PM

It was also frustrating trying to watch a video clip online

Princess Consuela Bananahammock · 04-08-2015 06:31PM

Cee-Jay-Cee wrote: »

I remember it taking an hour to download a 1mb porn clip at 2am in the morning and then saving it a hidden folder for future 'use'

Or a 5mb clip that would disconnect at the 95% mark.

Harry Palmr · 04-08-2015 06:39PM

That static gif rather than jpg was the main picture format.

Also - Real audio files and video files. No one misses Real Player a piece of utter junk.

The use of download accelerators.

Harry Palmr · 04-08-2015 06:43PM

Das Kitty wrote: »

Rathergood.com came a bit later, I think. But it's still amazing.

Thanks for mentioning this site. Last week I was trying to remember where Gaybar and the punk kittens were! Fear the Kittens by Laibach never gets boring.

Das Kitty · 04-08-2015 06:43PM

You couldn't beat an autoplaying midi clip of Ode to Joy on an Angelfire fan site's splash page.

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup · 04-08-2015 06:46PM

i remember setting aside Saturday afternoon to search for tony hawk warez (is that word gone?) on altavista. i'd search one term as changing words around didn't really change results and proceed to load all 10 pages of results into new IE browser windows (browser tabs were such a great innovation) and discard all the spam sites until maybe result #93 had proper downloads.

i first used Google early 2000 and it was like a new internet. first page had 10 great sites that i'd never heard of, all worked. link juice ftw.

RomanKnows · 04-08-2015 06:46PM

It really whips the llama's ass.

nxbyveromdwjpg · 04-08-2015 07:02PM

RomanKnows wrote: »

It really whips the llama's ass.

I still use Winamp on the phone. It's still great!

nxbyveromdwjpg · 04-08-2015 07:07PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6TzAQXVpB8

For Forks Sake · 04-08-2015 07:16PM

Virtual Irish Pub, can't believe the damn thing is still online (although someone seems to have given it a bit of a spruce up in the intervening 15 years since I last saw it)... http://www.vip.ie/

recyclebin · 04-08-2015 07:23PM

Who remembers them Unison internet boxes for you TV?

I remember trying to save up for one but it never happened. We only got online at home in about 2000/2001. I still have all the old songs I downloaded off Napster and the like burned on CDs

alias no.9 · 04-08-2015 07:37PM

Blinking Text

Interlaced GIFs that loaded every fourth or fifth row of pixels and then started filling in the gaps

Altavista which would return porn sites when searching something like c++

Someone mentioned SUMS in UL back in the day, there was a student email system that could be accessed from SUMS if you had a Eudora disk. You had to get a lecturer to approve your application and had to have an academic need for the account!

Kev_2012 · 04-08-2015 07:39PM

http://s3cf.recapguide.com/img/tv/117/9x14/The-Simpsons-Season-9-Episode-14-37-c3cd.jpg

ToddyDoody · 04-08-2015 07:53PM

No logging on before 6 (that's the dear rate)

For Forks Sake · 04-08-2015 08:19PM

Kev_2012 wrote: »

http://s3cf.recapguide.com/img/tv/117/9x14/The-Simpsons-Season-9-Episode-14-37-c3cd.jpg

hey look, it's dancing jesus....

http://www.homerswebpage.com/

Kalyke · 04-08-2015 08:39PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69MpLiYhsXw

mr_edge_to_you · 04-08-2015 08:47PM

rotten.com

Dyr · 04-08-2015 09:11PM

For Forks Sake wrote: »

Virtual Irish Pub, can't believe the damn thing is still online (although someone seems to have given it a bit of a spruce up in the intervening 15 years since I last saw it)... http://www.vip.ie/

Were there stickers up in pub doors about that at one stage?

I have a lot of nostalgia for those days. geo cities fan sites, web rings etc. When company websites were mostly just run by their IT dept's. so software downloads and drivers were front and centre

NabyLadistheman · 04-08-2015 11:34PM

Bearshare. Picking a song to download and checking it every few hours. 2 days later finally downloaded!

Voodoomelon · 05-08-2015 12:30AM

I remember starting college in 2002. In fairness they had surprisingly fast internet; all the ITs were on the same fibre network so you could get a fair chunk downloaded fast. The problem was getting the movies/games/porn home. Even in 2002 there was no USB sticks available in anything bigger than 16MB and these were megabucks.

Enter the external USB Zip drive! The only viable storage option which would initialise on the heavily administrated student machines. 100MB (or 250MB if you were the big balls on campus) at your disposal on one single disk. Could even fit it in your pocket.

Fantastic stuff.

05-08-2015 07:34AM

Voodoomelon wrote: »

I remember starting college in 2002. In fairness they had surprisingly fast internet; all the ITs were on the same fibre network so you could get a fair chunk downloaded fast. The problem was getting the movies/games/porn home. Even in 2002 there was no USB sticks available in anything bigger than 16MB and these were megabucks.

Funnily enough, the speed of the dial-up never bothered me. I was just so glad to have ICQ, email and my own geocities webpage, it didn't matter.

I clearly remember around 2000 my Dad saying "high speed internet is going to be the next big thing", and we were like, pfft, who cares about a 10 seconds loading a page? Then a few years later going away to college, where a page would load so fast it would give you a fright.

It's exciting to think of the internet evolving in the next 20 years, probably more dramatically than it has in the last 20 years because of exponential growth.

I think we can look forward to the lines between the physical world and the online world being blurred. We won't sit at laptops or PCs anymore, things like implanted and worn devices, and 3d printing, will make the online and the physical world far more interactive as we go about our daily living.

_Whimsical_ · 05-08-2015 08:01AM

I remember checking my emails before 6 in the evening knowing that if i was discovered by my mum id be murdered because it was expensive before 6. The price of a national call! Might as well go crazy and just ring Dublin than turn it on during the daytime!

I also remember that when my granny heard we got the internet she clipped a story from the paper for me about a man from the US who met a woman online and killed her abd then pickled her body. The piece of paper was given to me with the words "be awfully careful, this man came out of the internet and did this!". She thought it was crazy that we were taking such risks. :-)

B.A._Baracus · 05-08-2015 08:56AM

I work in web design now and it's funny to go back at those websites :P
It was like the wild west :pac: No thought went into design, loading times, typography or anything else. It was just stick everything you can on a page. Oh and you always had to stick up a cheesy background image too :pac:

But within saying that alot of websites back then were self built with angelfire and geocities (ahh memories) But the bigger websites did think about design.

It's also funny to look back at the shift from the vast majority of people building there own websites to now a more established industry of paying people to do so.

CardBordWindow · 05-08-2015 10:18AM

I remember waiting at least 20 minutes each time I went to watch one of the joe cartoons. There was no loading screen, so you hadn't a clue how close you were to watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnjOuZQ0z90

1990's internet memories

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