When did you first get on the internet.

[pylon]

1993/1994. Whenever Doom deathmatching became available.

I specifically got internet service to play Doom. I think the company was cyberwave?

I do rememeber when internet dating first started in the late 90's, with lavalife, and oneandonly, it was like fishing with dynamite. There was all these ultra mega dork guys, and some very cute, yet nerdy chicks that were so easy to pick up. 90% of your competition as a guy, was your typical DanD computer geek types, and if you were even remotely good looking, in reasonable shape, or had any sort of social skills (eg: game) you could have an unlimited supply of nerdy puss. And nerdy chicks, tend to be pent up freaks in bed. Better yet, you never had to introduce them to your friends, so you weren't worried about getting the odd dud, or fatty showing up. I mastered the art of coming down with an instantaneous 'fever' and 'nausea' as my bailout.

Man I made a lot of big promises and wrote a lot of cheques I couldn't cash back then...lol, I miss those days.

[MaDMaN_26]

Originally Posted by MaDMaN_26

My mom and her husband ran a business that had to have pretty top of the line computers for the time.

I'm assuming we are not talking about BBS stuff as I had some experience with those back when 9400 baud was expensive and fast... the actual internet was, well I thought it was in 1992-93 but I know the page I saw was webcrawler, which launched in 94' so I'm a little confused... I moved out of my moms place after graduating which was 93, So I assumed I would have seen it before moving out so I'm unclear as to why I would have been at their offices after that to see webcrawler in 94...

At any rate somewhere in there. After being told to "search" for something I asked if instead if I could just start at the beginning and go through each page in order... The concept was very foreign at the time and it took a few minutes of discussion to set in.... "What do you mean search for something... in what context?" lol.

Well my mom says I was using Mosaic in 91-92 on Windows 3.0... I may not even have known it was called the internet at the time... given my "why can't I just start at page 1 and just going through them all?" questions when staring at webcrawler search engine in 94 its very likely I did not. Funny how the mind/memory works.

[photon]

Originally Posted by MaDMaN_26

ya reading that wikipedia article - just a bit of it - seems like a similiar setup to a torrent network...

probably what fathered the idea of bittorrent...

I never used a usenet... but it also seems to be similiar to mIRC which I dabbled with a bit in late 90's mostly...

Kind of like bittorrent I guess, though bittorrent is peer to peer where no data gets stored on a server, whereas with usenet the message data was still stored on usenet servers, and you had to have access to one.. most ISPs provided them or you could (and still can) pay extra for access to better/faster ones.

You'd use an app to get the info from the Usenet server for a specific group and then could download messages and attachments.

Usenet is still huge for pirating and pr0n.

IRC was different again, just a big chat server really.

[MaDMaN_26]

Originally Posted by photon

Usenet is still huge for pirating and pr0n.

IRC was different again, just a big chat server really.

Ya I think usenet pirating is the reason most users of private torrent tracker websites see many movies split into 2 CD'/sizes... even though the media is not really valid anymore it has something to do with the standards no one dares break (or be banned) in the what I assume/think are these usenet groups... and since its a large/infinite group of users and no one is in charge... they are not likely to meet up one day and change how things are done, so they will likely continue to rip material in the format that has become the standard... its then leaked as is to the private websites/trackers and then the non private trackers

From what I understand most if not all of these groups would prefer nothing they do ever make it to private torrent sites let alone the WWW in general.

I cannot remember where I read about this... it was a fascinating read though.

[Sr. Mints]

Anyone here a current or past regular on alt.sports.hockey.nhl.calgary-flames? There is one name I see floating around on here who I think was a regular once upon a time.

[Sliver]

In '94 or '95 I was at my friend's house and he showed me a picture of a dude fisting a chick. It was pretty much the most shocking thing I had ever seen at the time. Now that pic would barely be NSFW compared to the crap on the net.

[Coys1882]

I started off with a 486 33mhz with 2MB of RAM and a 100mb hard drive I think it was. No sound card either! haha.

My first ISP was TEN or something like that which was more of a portal for playing games than the internet - then I moved over to AOL.

Eventually those speeds weren't fast enough so I moved to Nucleus, in '95 I think it was, strictly for their awesome pings so I could play Quake more competitively.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by jammies

2 and then I upgraded to Warp when it came out. It was miles ahead of Windows at the time, it's too bad they couldn't get the developer support to have many native applications.

I used it from 1.3 through to Warp. It was fun, if frustrating at times.

It's still alive eh:
http://ecomstation.com/

[Komskies]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

Can't really remember the exact year, it was either 1993 or 1994. Initially we had the crappy AOL trial version for a couple months. Then we switched the Cadvision. The good ol 14.4 modem. I remember my parents only letting us go on at specific times because it would tie up the phone line. I used to go to some site called chathouse chatroom (don't remember). Also was one of the early adopters for ICQ. I think I still have the number lying around somewhere.

Does anyone remember 3Web back in the day? They promised free internet, but it never worked for me.

Ahh yes, ICQ. I was also an early adopter. I believe my ICQ# was in the 5 digit range. 32,000 something.

[Rathji]

The first time I accessed the internet (I guess it really wasn't the internet) , was in 1988 in school we had a chat setup with another school in town, Penbrooke Meadows I think.

Next, I got a little loaner tablet type thing with like a 4 line lcd screen from school that you coupd plug into the phone line. We were able to log into BBS at a couple universities and stuff. I wish I could remember what the comptuer was though.

The first foray into the modern internet was 1996 on my grandma's 386 Tandy. My uncle was (and still is I guess) the editor for the online Fly Fisherman magazine, so every new tech that came out he would try and integrate. Like virtual tours of fishing areas and stuff. I spent a lot of time there and on the national pastime for teenaged kids, even though 56k was a pipe dream for me:

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Rathji

The first time I accessed the internet (I guess it really wasn't the internet) , was in 1988 in school we had a chat setup with another school in town, Penbrooke Meadows I think.

Next, I got a little loaner tablet type thing with like a 4 line lcd screen from school that you coupd plug into the phone line. We were able to log into BBS at a couple universities and stuff. I wish I could remember what the comptuer was though.

The first foray into the modern internet was 1996 on my grandma's 386 Tandy. My uncle was (and still is I guess) the editor for the online Fly Fisherman magazine, so every new tech that came out he would try and integrate. Like virtual tours of fishing areas and stuff. I spent a lot of time there and on the national pastime for teenaged kids, even though 56k was a pipe dream for me:

Anyone else waiting for that picture to defuzz to expose a fat chick?

Or am I just too paranoid.

[Robbob]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Tradewars?

LOL, pretty sure that was the one.

[Mtt48]

LORD - legend of the red dragon was a good bbs game

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Rathji

Next, I got a little loaner tablet type thing with like a 4 line lcd screen from school that you coupd plug into the phone line. We were able to log into BBS at a couple universities and stuff. I wish I could remember what the comptuer was though.

Was it a Tandy TRS-80 Model 100 by any chance:


They were fantastic machines and something I craved desperately as a kid. My understanding is that there are numerous foreign correspondents and other reporter types that still use them, because they have a nice keyboard, run on standard AA batteries, have built in modem, and are nigh on indestructible. Well that and writers develop weird fixations on their tools, but still, awesome little machines.

[Rathji]

^
That looks like it.


Rathji

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Rathji

^
That looks like it.


Rathji

Am I good or what

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Mtt48

LORD - legend of the red dragon was a good bbs game

Yup I remember that one. Looking back on it, it seems so ridiculosu to spend all that time logging onto a BBS in order to have a couple of turns on a text based game.

[photon]

There was one I liked to play called InFiNiTy CoMpLeX I think it was.

Started with BBS doors (games) like that but that got me into MUDs, I used to help run one once. We used to run dynamic events where the MUDs imms (Immortals) would take control of mobs and do semi-scripted stuff but interact with the players and stuff.

Yeah it was all only text based, but then again think about how much better an imaginary world can be in your mind from reading a book compared to seeing it in a movie!

[ResAlien]

Not sure if using telnet to connect counts as "internet", but early 90's to get to Genocide, great MUD

[La Flames Fan]

My first foray was AOL, obviously.

I was addicted to chat rooms and actually met a "woman" from San Francisco who was 10 years older and wanted to fly me out to San Francisco to meet her in person.

For some reason my mom thought that was a bad idea for a 16 year old.

In retrospect she was more than right...hahahah.