The old internet

Fionn · 19-04-2019 9:00am

Microsoft NetMeeting anyone?

Stratvs · 19-04-2019 9:01am

Ger Roe wrote: »

eircom.net email addresses ....

One of the originals, if someone is still using it, they most likely were one of the early dial up web explorers. 'Eircom' was the national (only) Irish telecom provider in the early internet days, following a re-brand in the 80's from the original 'Telecom Eireann' designation (under direction of The Department of Posts and Telegraphs, or P&T)

Not only is my email @eircom.net but I’ve my own name (first last all one word) with no 1,2,3 or 56 after it.

OU812 · 19-04-2019 10:24am

Stratvs wrote: »

Not only is my email @eircom.net but I’ve my own name (first last all one word) with no 1,2,3 or 56 after it.

I have that with gmail AND hotmail. I’m on the net a kinda long time

RasTa · 19-04-2019 10:49am

Being the standard ping for online

branie2 · 19-04-2019 1:57pm

A confession here

One time when I was searching the net with the term "quicksand", I came across some sites with fictional stories about women who were "turned on" by mud and quicksand, especially when they were sinking in the stuff.

Mena Mitty · 19-04-2019 2:41pm

I remember being sent a link in an email for a Deviant's dictionary for a laugh...I wasn't laughing if I remember rightly, it was tears in my eyes from how innocent I was and I thought how the world was a very sick place.

Capt'n Midnight · 19-04-2019 7:10pm

Fionn wrote: »

Microsoft NetMeeting anyone?

and getting people to run conf.exe

ozmo · 19-04-2019 9:22pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

and getting people to run conf.exe

Telling a chat room that alt+f4 would give them mod access- then seeing them all disconnect ... lol. Bonus if you could get them do a ctrl+alt+del -as on older windows it would actually reboot the whole pc

whiskeyman · 19-04-2019 9:38pm

Convincing your parents that all the neighbours and even cousins down the country had the internet, and we'd learn so many new things if we got it...

Then the first thing you'd search for was porn!

Firefox11 · 19-04-2019 9:42pm

The Internet???.....pfft.....I was using BBS, Telnet and Fidonet long before you were born!!

Anteayer · 20-04-2019 9:46pm

Ger Roe wrote: »

eircom.net email addresses ....

One of the originals, if someone is still using it, they most likely were one of the early dial up web explorers. 'Eircom' was the national (only) Irish telecom provider in the early internet days, following a re-brand in the 80's from the original 'Telecom Eireann' designation (under direction of The Department of Posts and Telegraphs, or P&T)

Weren't they originally @tinet.ie

Also Telecom Éireann wasn't the first ISP here. They only launched an ISP service when the net was fairly well established.

There's were a few very early ones like Eirenet but, Ireland Online "IOL" was probably the first one to get mass market attention and then Indigo.

IOL ended up owned by An Post and then BT Ireland while Indigo was bought by Telecom Éireann.

I always thought Indigo was actually a better name than Tinet or Eircom. You could easily have rebranded TE as Indigo.

Telecom Éireann also tried to get into digital publishing in the early days with a subsidiary called Rondomondo and a search engine called Doras both of which were shut down in 2001.

It took a while for those old telcos to realise that they are just dumb pipes and didn't have the competencies to be content creators.

The J Stands for Jay · 21-04-2019 9:28am

OU812 wrote: »

I have that with gmail AND hotmail. I’m on the net a kinda long time

Don't you have rocketmail? n00b

Ger Roe · 23-04-2019 10:26am

Mr.S wrote: »

Where they not still issued until the changeover to Eir?

Not sure when they stopped, but seeing as I still use one, I am glad that they at least keep the service going through all the ownership changes over the years. .... or maybe they have forgotten that it still exists.

Around these parts, (North Wicklow) there are many people still on @eircom.net addresses, as the early dial up from the national telco was the only option for most 'rural' people at the time.

Nowdays we have fiber to cabinet as a connection source and a selection of ISP's to choose from... very 21st century, although we are still a way from having cable provider options since 'the piped' TV revolution never reached these parts.

nuac · 01-11-2019 1:32am

ozmo wrote: »

I remember Ireland on line - using mozilla browser (before firefox) off a floppy disk.
Only sites of any interest were Nasa and star trek and news groups.
Altavista was the search engine...

IOL were pioneers. Was about their 300th member. Very distinctive tone when logging on.
Being online outside weekends was expensive. Telix was the log in programme. I came in a collection of floppies
Usenet and BB boards, early Email
The first Law database I found was UCC. When I was onto an educational listserve or similar from the USA, some hacker put on a crude message.
I uploaded a copy of Bunreacht na h-Éireann from that Cork database and sent it to the hacker saying it was an Irish curse. No reply
Cannot remember name of my first modem, but it cost £800.
Speed was a blistering 300 Baud out and 800 Baud in ( or maybe the other way around)
Eheu fugaces. Am now explaining to grandchildren that our phones back then could not take photos, nor run games or other software.

B.A._Baracus · 01-11-2019 4:19am

I miss the old days of the internet.
For me my first experience of the net was using the Sega Dreamcast to connect online probably around 2000. Seriously that games console was amazing!

But I miss the days of randomly visiting angelfire and Geocities websites. I guess they morphed into blogs today. You could argue that YouTube has taken over so much as well.

limnam · 01-11-2019 8:33am

B.A._Baracus wrote: »

I miss the old days of the internet.
For me my first experience of the net was using the Sega Dreamcast to connect online probably around 2000. Seriously that games console was amazing!

But I miss the days of randomly visiting angelfire and Geocities websites. I guess they morphed into blogs today. You could argue that YouTube has taken over so much as well.

Have at it

https://www.geocitiesarchive.org/default.aspx

01-11-2019 11:15am

The Old Internet.

Full of badly coded jerry - built personal homepages. 75% of the time launched with great announcements and plans, only never to see another update ever again, and often with utterly redicoulous GIF IMAGES saying "Under Construction, check back later" - the one that come to mind here is the dancing placards.

Sites for such monstrosities include XOOM, TRIPOD, homepage.eircom.net

maccored · 01-11-2019 11:31am

the web and the internet has always been full of fools. Its just they have to be less tech savvy now with smart phones so more of them are online. theres always been idiots

Hotblack Desiato · 01-11-2019 1:06pm

Deleted User wrote: »

Full of badly coded jerry - built personal homepages. 75% of the time launched with great announcements and plans, only never to see another update ever again, and often with utterly redicoulous GIF IMAGES saying "Under Construction, check back later" - the one that come to mind here is the dancing placards.

Don't forget the impressively low number on the "hit counter"

Hotblack Desiato · 01-11-2019 1:08pm

maccored wrote: »

the web and the internet has always been full of fools. Its just they have to be less tech savvy now with smart phones so more of them are online. theres always been idiots

There were some utter whack jobs on Usenet even back when only academic institutions and major US tech/defence firms had access. (I had read-only access to it in college in 1990-91)
Vicious and prolonged flame wars, trolling, group invasions, cyberstalking, doxxing, trying to get people fired, etc. are nothing new.

limnam · 01-11-2019 2:08pm

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Vicious and prolonged flame wars, trolling, group invasions, cyberstalking, doxxing, trying to get people fired, etc. are nothing new.

I think the difference today is the majority of the people on the "old" one were _slightly_ more intelligent so the wars were more interesting.

:pac:

Hotblack Desiato · 01-11-2019 5:13pm

Well yeah. I remember reading groups where a single spelling mistake could result in a page long rant in reply

On the "Dumb Facebook updates" thread it's almost impossible to make out what they're trying to say half the time. It's like idiots evolved their own language.

Brian Lighthouse · 01-11-2019 6:07pm

The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll

Amazing story of the Internet's infancy. A page turner, although I presume you know how books work ;-). (PM with email for *.pdf copy)

My own memory of the old internet. In 1994 we rolled out our own opticfibre network across our facility and campus (State owned) because we were sick of the speed of copper wire. In 1992 we had applied for funding for it, didn't get it, then we applied for funding for a decades supply of stationary - got it and bought opticfibre with the money and then we were flying it.

Then in 1999 I worked in a firm who celebrated their 10th anniversary of selling product online only. In that field it is the global leader still to this day.

Brian Lighthouse · 01-11-2019 6:24pm

PS: I think the Boards layout is probably the last site I know to still keep the chatroom style of the late 1990s. Anyone else?

Four Phucs Ache · 01-11-2019 9:09pm

Brian Lighthouse wrote: »

PS: I think the Boards layout is probably the last site I know to still keep the chatroom style of the late 1990s. Anyone else?

Hopefully it stays like this.

01-11-2019 9:19pm

Search Engine of the old internet.... YAHOO In my first year in third level in 1996: This was praised to high heaven by one lecturer. Other search engines you could try were Ask Jeeves and Lycos. Ofcourse there was also DORAS for searching homepages on eircom.net

Hotblack Desiato · 03-11-2019 8:32pm

Brian Lighthouse wrote: »

The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll

Cliff Stoll is a top bloke. These days he sells hand-blown glass Klein bottles, I bought one

Brian Lighthouse wrote: »

PS: I think the Boards layout is probably the last site I know to still keep the chatroom style of the late 1990s. Anyone else?

Nah. Lots of motorbike forums still running classic vBulletin, I'm sure there's many other special interest ones too.

Deleted User wrote: »

Search Engine of the old internet.... YAHOO In my first year in third level in 1996: This was praised to high heaven by one lecturer. Other search engines you could try were Ask Jeeves and Lycos. Ofcourse there was also DORAS for searching homepages on eircom.net

Back in the day, Yahoo! (you forgot the exclamation mark :pac: ) was a directory of websites, not a search engine.

First search engine I ever used was AltaVista, DEC owned it. They paid for a lot of the infrastructure of the early internet. AltaVista also developed Babel Fish, the first online translator (which of course got its name from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.)

Redneck Reject · 03-11-2019 8:57pm

First speed was 2400 bps,then 9600.Once we got to 14.400 bps we thought that was blazing fast,heh.

Capt'n Midnight · 07-11-2019 11:15pm

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Cliff Stoll is a top bloke. These days he sells hand-blown glass Klein bottles, I bought one

Pfff ! Fool.

Infinite surface area. You'll never keep it clean. :pac:

Back in the day, Yahoo! (you forgot the exclamation mark :pac: ) was a directory of websites, not a search engine.

Yahoo invested $1 billion for 30 percent of Alibaba back in 2005

If Yahoo had done nothing else it would be worth $143Bn today. It's not :rolleyes:

First search engine I ever used was AltaVista, DEC owned it. They paid for a lot of the infrastructure of the early internet. AltaVista also developed Babel Fish, the first online translator (which of course got its name from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.)

I miss DEC and the Vaxen and Altavista's "near" in searches

Gwynplaine · 07-11-2019 11:44pm

Who remembers the unison box?

The old internet

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