The early days of the internet

_sparkie_ · 29-03-2011 9:50pm

phill106 wrote: »

msdos you mean? Or are you trolling

thats the one! forgive me as i was only about 5/6 at the time but i will always remember that name.

tribalwings · 29-03-2011 9:55pm

Well my 1st experience the net was bout 94ish, I think it was a 368 with a 14.4 modem. Back with alta vista on indigo and tinet, hotmail, and mIrc to chat and meet up to play LAN games of quake2

Sephiroth_dude · 29-03-2011 10:52pm

The yr was 1999,I had an acer 286,1mb of ram dos 5.0,upgraded to windows 3.1 and it was slow as hell.

Daith · 29-03-2011 11:00pm

Running up a massive phone bill...then waiting for 6pm cause it was cheaper...then IOL No Limits, then I could finally download a movie in peace (over the weekend of course!)

Sephiroth_dude · 29-03-2011 11:02pm

Daith wrote: »

Running up a massive phone bill...then waiting for 6pm cause it was cheaper...then IOL No Limits, then I could finally download a movie in peace (over the weekend of course!)

Iol no limits we had that too,no one could get through to us for the entire night

Daith · 29-03-2011 11:19pm

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

Iol no limits we had that too,no one could get through to us for the entire night

Ah the cries of "get the **** off the internet" are a solid part of my childhood memories!

Mr. Loverman · 29-03-2011 11:48pm

When is the last time you downloaded a movie in MPEG format?!

Naikon · 30-03-2011 12:03am

Mr. Loverman wrote: »

When is the last time you downloaded a movie in MPEG format?!

Yesterday. Totem/Gstreamer with fluendo support being the reason. This way, I won't be potentially sued for watching video on a non Microsoft/Apple computer. Not that it's likely, I just like using totem.

The Scientician · 30-03-2011 12:06am

I got online in 1996. The main early website I recall was Virtual Irish Pub. Used to spend ages chatting in there. I have a vague recollection of people saying "the internet is lagging because America has just gone online", something to do with timezones, anyone remember that? And also if you tried to connect any time between 6pm and 7pm it was nigh on impossible because everyone else was too.

bullets · 30-03-2011 12:30am

I remember in Limerick the only way to access the internet was through the NIHE later to become UL.
on a 9600bps modem you needed to type ATDT and the telephone number for UL only to be answered by security over an over again, until you got lucky and connected.

no fancy graphical interfaces at that time, everything was done by the command line. Back then the most exciting thing
you could download was Tabs for guitar/lyrics for songs, and more mandy, it took about 20 mins to download an a4 size photo of wendy james line by line.

Some Amateur Radio nerds my remember packratt where you connected your Radio to the computer and downloaded weather forcasts and pictures through the airwaves.

IRC was used before graphical chatrooms, EVERY BLOODY AMERICAN you interacted with assumed that you were from the USA and instead of asking what country you were from they asked you what State you were from. GRRrrr still annoys me all this time later.

Information was free and shared! no Ads! no pop ups!

Back then you typed in Plain Text or ROT13 for cursing.
Little bits of "1337" thrown in when you got cocky.
You typed with 80 characters wide line length.
You snipped and quoted FIRST then replied.
As you read your emails the old ones wold stay at the top and you worked your way down.

F19 stealth fighter, civilization and leaderboard golf where
the PC actually spoke to you via vox files were revolutionary. 5 and 1/4 inch discs were damn expensive, 3.5inch 720kb discs could be reformatted as 1.44mb discs by drilling a hole on one side of the plastic on the outer case saving you loads.

Games were copyright protected by telling you goto page
10, chapter2, line 20, word 3! or other colorful devices like a red filter to code break coloured text or code wheels.

Command and conquer 1 was awesome as you could dial your friend up the road and multiplay if your parents allowed you on the phone for more than a few mins.

printers were dot matrix and noisey and rocked the whole room when printing.

DR DOS (Digital Research DOS) was considered DOS6 but never took off, PC tools was awesome for hacking in HEX,
Norton Disk doctor solved all, Your PC is now stoned was one of the few virus's out there back then as well as cookie monster that did feck all.

~B

Offy · 30-03-2011 1:16am

The Scientician wrote: »

I got online in 1996. The main early website I recall was Virtual Irish Pub. Used to spend ages chatting in there. I have a vague recollection of people saying "the internet is lagging because America has just gone online", something to do with timezones, anyone remember that? And also if you tried to connect any time between 6pm and 7pm it was nigh on impossible because everyone else was too.

I do but it lagged like hell from 6 to 11 in the sticks!

wylo · 30-03-2011 1:45am

what I find crazy is that this IS the beginning of the internet , we're talking about a technology that has reshaped almost the whole world and something that will be used in whatever form for 1000s of years to come. I feel privileged to be around for its beginning.

I also feel lucky, because I believe our experience on the net will be the most free one. I honestly think its only a matter of time before the laws come down heavier and heavier on all things 'internet' regarding copyright/downloading/etc. I also think its only a matter of time before we start to get charged for things that would have been otherwise free. I even notice little things like some newspapers starting to charge, I also notice freeware is becoming more and more scarce, and is being replaced by the demo version or trial version. Gone are the days of people writing software just for the sake of wanting to write it and share it.

Im going to enjoy it while it lasts.

Gyalist · 30-03-2011 2:45am

First went online in the 86/87 academic year. In those days it was the Lynx text browser on a VAX terminal, FTP, Telnet and shell accounts. Usenet was where all the action was, then later came Gopher servers.

Only a select few had or even knew what an e-mail* address was. Archie, Veronica and Jughead were the early search engines.

Ah, the good old days.

*e-mail is the old-school spelling.

[Deleted User] · 30-03-2011 5:45am

I remember downloading about 500mb of pron at 2kb/s before losing it all on a dodgy hard drive.. Painful.

maninasia · 30-03-2011 7:48am

I know the computer labs under the train tracks well. My favourite activity was looking up altnews and altnet, BBS network. I became addicted for a whole year to the BBS. The power of just being able to communicate with people from all over the world was mind blowing. At that time they were still mostly techies, academics and engineers online- 1993/1994.
Incredibly I regularly chatted with NASA systems engineers for the Cassini space project. There was no barrier like there is now.
The speed of change was very fast too. Although some people might think Facebook or social networking etc is a revolutionary change by 1997 you had most of the internet functions up and running...browsers, BBS, instant chat,web based e-mail, pornsites, blogging (in the form of geosites) etc. This all popped up within a couple of years. Many of the early users learned to write HTML because whatever you created really wasn't that bad compared to most other people!

Alexander Supertramp · 30-03-2011 8:27am

Offy wrote: »

I do but it lagged like hell from 6 to 11 in the sticks!

Jesus the lag in the sticks was awful!

Here is a site which will take you back to the early days of web design. Frames all over the shop!

http://www2.warnerbros.com/spacejam/movie/jam.htm

filthymcnasty · 30-03-2011 9:00am

Mr. Loverman wrote: »

Funny/weird story.

Remember the absolute tar in the Kevin Street snackery which was supposedly coffee?

I used to drink that stuff all the time in the labs. I then noticed I'd start feeling really sick in front of the computers. I couldn't figure out what was causing the sickness (doh!), so I went to the doctor who told me I had a phobia of computers!

About 10 years later I realised, eh no, it was just the insanely strong disgusting coffee.

That doctor messed me up for years.

I remember the putrid coffee from the snackery. Was in Kevin St circa 96/97 as a complete Internet/computer innocent.

I can also recall the computer labs on the 4th floor being full of lads watching porn. Nothing blocked back then. Also DIT had at the time had a DOS based email system called 'P-mail'. No-one had a clue how to use it.

Mr. Loverman · 30-03-2011 1:00pm

filthymcnasty wrote: »

I remember the putrid coffee from the snackery. Was in Kevin St circa 96/97 as a complete Internet/computer innocent.

Yep that's when I was there. We were the group who would frequently put Michael Jackson's "Heal the world" on the jukebox 5 times in a row during lunch...

As bad as the coffee was, they were good times.

Daith · 30-03-2011 1:47pm

Guestbooks on websites.

karlog · 30-03-2011 1:57pm

Who could forget......

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

Skerries · 30-03-2011 2:03pm

the unaired pilot of 24 if it was set in 1994

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMLH_QyPTYM

Voodoomelon · 30-03-2011 2:05pm

Old computing, can't beat it.

We used to play multiplayer C&C Red Alert on 486s over serial cable in '95. SERIAL CABLE! Everything span out of control from there, me and my mate were obsessive about networking even that far back. In 2000 we had a wireless network spanning 200 metres down our street between two houses using parabolic reflectors made from tinfoil and Rice Krispies boxes. This was before anyone used wireless at all, pioneers I tell ya!

Offy · 30-03-2011 2:12pm

Voodoomelon wrote: »

Old computing, can't beat it.

We used to play multiplayer C&C Red Alert on 486s over serial cable in '95. SERIAL CABLE! Everything span out of control from there, me and my mate were obsessive about networking even that far back. In 2000 we had a wireless network spanning 200 metres down our street between two houses using parabolic reflectors made from tinfoil and Rice Krispies boxes. This was before anyone used wireless at all, pioneers I tell ya!

I worked night shift back in 1996-1997, we used to play Doom over serial cables

phill106 · 30-03-2011 2:49pm

Axis Cometo wrote: »

was back in '95 as a youngun. internet cafe opened in my town with 4 pc's that all had their own modem. Used to spent my saturday down there. First site i was on was either hotmaill or yahoo. Can remember spending hours on yahoo chat talking to ppl all over the world.

Took me till about 2004 to get broadband in, at a whopping 512K which then went straight to 8MB in 2006.

now in 2001 have a sweet 30mb connection and loving it, tho the internet has lost most of its coolness factor for me as its now a work tool, as an IT tech and consultant i dont really enjoy "Playing" on the internet anymore. really miss the sound of a dial up modem

It's 2011 now... Go outside...Seriously

phill106 · 30-03-2011 2:57pm

the good old days of being kicked off esats no limits dial up for over using the unlimited service ! Was anyone else on that and got the letter?
Or remember getright, handy download manager, let you resume those huge 5mb downloads!

InTheTrees · 30-03-2011 3:01pm

Gyalist wrote: »

the Lynx text browser on a VAX terminal,.

A Vax? We had one of those. It was our main server and It ran VMS(?).

I only had to interact with it to manage files (but there was no drag and drop then) and its brand of unix was particularly unintelligible far as I remember.

Chairman Meow · 30-03-2011 3:02pm

First time ie ver went online was 1996 i tihnk, in a net cafe in town. All i could think of to look for was Gillian Anderson photos.
There was one smug bastard in our group then who actually had the internet at home in 1996. He was always boasting about how he could get us any guitar tabs we wanted off the net. Twat.

Did a PLC course in information systems in 1998, which was my formal introduction to the glory of windows 95/98 and the internet at large. I cant remember **** about the course itself, but i did learn some really valuable lessons, mostly how to go about setting up a lan game of quake and doom. We also had GTA but we never got it working

The course was mon - weds but wed come in under the pretence of needing to do work on thurs-fri just to play quake

Got the intertubes in my own place in about 2000 or so. Had my own angelfire homepage like everyone else back then. I was on IOL free and the ****ers cut me off cause apparently i used too much of their unlimited internet access. Bastards! Like msot others i hung around in chatrooms msot of the time, its mad how chatrooms died a death really. They seemed soooooo futuristic back then and just mindblowing. I was genuinely shocked when they died off.

Hard to imagine a time when there was no google, no youtube, no twitter, no facebook, not even a ****ing myspace. Great days.

Jesus Wept · 30-03-2011 3:07pm

phill106 wrote: »

the good old days of being kicked off esats no limits dial up for over using the unlimited service ! Was anyone else on that and got the letter?
Or remember getright, handy download manager, let you resume those huge 5mb downloads!

esat *****.
'unlimited' - stupid *****.

InTheTrees · 30-03-2011 3:11pm

bullets wrote: »

IRC was used before graphical chatrooms, EVERY BLOODY AMERICAN you interacted with assumed that you were from the USA and instead of asking what country you were from they asked you what State you were from. GRRrrr still annoys me all this time later.

Well to be fair, encountering anyone from outside the usa was extremely rare. It would be like me asking someone at the bus stop here in seattle what country they're from.

I think the simple fact that in the USA local phone calls have always been free was one of the major factors in the explosively fast growth.

The early days of the internet

Comments