Remember the 90's (on the internet)?

[guytheninja]

I was surfing the web today and I found an ancient website about an old computer-related, Saturday morning kids show "Reboot". I remember when I visited the site in days of yore, I thought it was very informative and up-to-date webpage. Today -- it just looks bad. And, while I was visiting it in the past, I didn't really think that the website would look washed up in the future. How times have changed friends.

http://www.inwap.com/mf/reboot/index.shtml
Here is a Bionic Commando site I used to visit as well.
http://www.elitecoder.com/bionic/bionic-commando.html

Do you guys remember what it was like when you first got on the internet and viewing a site "in frames" was a big thing. Cheezy Gif images were everywhere, and Geocities and webrings were popular? (Now Geocities is about to be shut down).
http://www.pcworld.com/article/16376...l_existed.html

I remember all the way back when I would log on to AOL with a 2400 baud connection just to join a chatroom on Excite.com with 25 guys and one token female (yes women were rare on the internet back then --- or maybe many of them pretended to be guys, who knows). Of course, I had to keep an eye on the time because I was billed by the hour .

Tell us what your first internet experience was like.

[phatlip]

Originally Posted by Guytheninja

I was surfing the web today and I found an ancient website about an old computer-related, Saturday morning kids show "Reboot". I remember when I visited the site in days of yore, I thought it was very informative and up-to-date webpage. Today -- it just looks bad. And, while I was visiting it in the past, I didn't really think that the website would look washed up in the future. How times have changed friends.

http://www.inwap.com/mf/reboot/index.shtml
Here is a Bionic Commando site I used to visit as well.
http://www.elitecoder.com/bionic/bionic-commando.html

Do you guys remember what it was like when you first got on the internet and viewing a site "in frames" was a big thing. Cheezy Gif images were everywhere, and Geocities and webrings were popular? (Now Geocities is about to be shut down).
http://www.pcworld.com/article/16376...l_existed.html

I remember all the way back when I would log on to AOL with a 2400 baud connection just to join a chatroom on Excite.com with 25 guys and one token female (yes women were rare on the internet back then --- or maybe many of them pretended to be guys, who knows). Of course, I had to keep an eye on the time because I was billed by the hour .

Tell us what your first internet experience was like.

The first time I ever used the Internet was in elementary school and the first thing I clicked had porn come up. From that day on, the internets and I were best friends.

[guytheninja]

Originally Posted by Phatlip

The first time I ever used the Internet was in elementary school and the first thing I clicked had porn come up. From that day on, the internets and I were best friends.

I remember the day when you couldn't watch videos or listen to music on the internet (unless you could find some obscure .mov .rm or .wav files ). I remember when you couldn't buy or sell anything on the internet and even companies were not interested in selling anything. I remember when no one knew anything about Linux or GNU.....

But there has always been the porn site to stumble into... Maybe porn should be called the "oldest profession on the internet".

My first access to the internet was using email via dos system. if you wanted a web search, you would send a message to a gopher server and you would bet an email back with the search results. If you wanted to get a file you set a request to an ftp server and you either get an in-line uuencode format or later in a file attachment. Veronica, Archie, Gopher and a half a dozen other tools were the mode of the day. www came later. I think the first web browser I used might have been mosaic and then later netscape,

[danhauk]

AOL was the shit! Back then anyway. I can't even think of any other company that offered dial-up internet at the time. I remember spending most of my time in the "Games" section of the menu that popped up when you logged on.

Though I did spend some time in the AOL chat rooms once I discovered how fun they could be. In middle school I thought I was so cool because I had a program (can't remember the name or what kind of program it's known as, any help?) that had a bunch of stuff stored in it, like ASCII pictures, etc. And you could just click on it and it would automatically input each line into the chat box. You could also do the fake virus thing, kick people off by sending a bunch of IMs right after each other, change the color of your font to a rainbow gradient, etc. It was an awesome program on my Windows 3.11 machine.

The only thing I really disliked about being online was the fact that I had to tell everyone I was logging on so they wouldn't pick up the phone. Sometimes you could get away with picking up the phone for a second just to check it there was a dial-tone, but more often than not, simply picking up the phone would kick you offline.

[tokenuser]

Originally Posted by computoman

My first access to the internet was using email via dos system. if you wanted a web search, you would send a message to a gopher server and you would bet an email back with the search results. If you wanted to get a file you set a request to an ftp server and you either get an in-line uuencode format or later in a file attachment. Veronica, Archie, Gopher and a half a dozen other tools were the mode of the day. www came later. I think the first web browser I used might have been mosaic and then later netscape,

Similar.

My first encounter was in a highschool. Our year 9/10 Computer Studies class (1984/85) was fortunate that we could use the Apple ][ labs at the university for our classes early on a Monday morning. I got to play with a Lisa there, and we were allowed to explore the local Unix server a little as well (trivia - University of Wollongong - my Alma Mater - did the first code port of Unix from one platform to another). I had no computer contact through senior highschool except for using a IBM PCjr (Peanut) our school had won.

Then I got a CS traineeship at a local company (1988), and got online in a big way - IBM mainframe systems interconnecting our global facilities, and an email system that was jerry rigged via a PDP interface to Usenet.

I bought my first PC as a first year CS student at UoW, and got online at 1200/1200, dialing into the Unix server, uploading (Kermit, then Xmodem ... later YModem or ZModem) my Pascal code, driving to campus, downloading to a Mac, and cross compiling my Borland C into MacPascal and printing.

There was no WWW in 1988. But, in addition to Gopher, Veronica, Archie, we also accessed WAIS - the Wide Area Information Service, which in many ways is the grandfather of the WWW.

If you wanted porn, you had to go explicitly looking for it - usenet was then and 20years later is still the best source

I played around a little with Lynx (a non gui www browser) once the www started to come alive, but I got my first GUI browser via a mailed floppy disc from my GF (now wife) who was studying in the US in 1993. Mosaic.

Yes, I am an old fart, and have been working living in an online world longer than many of you lived. Depressing.

[hellhound]

I didnt get online until '94 or 95... and what I remember most was that almost everything was free. People made websites for the fun of it and 99% werent looking to cash-in on subscriptions or ads. Warez boards were everywhere.

[guytheninja]

Originally Posted by danhauk

AOL was the shit! Back then anyway. I can't even think of any other company that offered dial-up internet at the time. I remember spending most of my time in the "Games" section of the menu that popped up when you logged on.

You know, I never played the games. I really don't know why either . However, I did visit the chat rooms on AOL back then. You are right though, back then AOL was cutting edge internet goodness. Now, however, its more like an albatross around your neck (that you can't unsubscribe to ).

Originally Posted by danhauk

Though I did spend some time in the AOL chat rooms once I discovered how fun they could be. In middle school I thought I was so cool because I had a program (can't remember the name or what kind of program it's known as, any help?) that had a bunch of stuff stored in it, like ASCII pictures, etc. And you could just click on it and it would automatically input each line into the chat box. You could also do the fake virus thing, kick people off by sending a bunch of IMs right after each other, change the color of your font to a rainbow gradient, etc. It was an awesome program on my Windows 3.11 machine.

I don't remember that program, but what I do remember is Excite Virtual Chat (I think that is the name).
http://web.archive.org/web/199704290...chat/?a-chch-t

You would download the chat software and basically use a bitmap file as an avatar. When you entered the chatroom, it looked like a 2D overhead view of a room with avatar pictures. When someone else would speak, their avatar would produce a bubble with text. I thought for sure the old way of doing chat rooms would die off and this would be the next big thing --- I was hilariously wrong .

Originally Posted by danhauk

The only thing I really disliked about being online was the fact that I had to tell everyone I was logging on so they wouldn't pick up the phone. Sometimes you could get away with picking up the phone for a second just to check it there was a dial-tone, but more often than not, simply picking up the phone would kick you offline.

Heck yea! And the funny thing was that one day my mom got furious (because she wanted to use the phone) and said --- "Get off that internet --- its just a waste of your time and it will never go anywhere anyway!". Now she has a facebook page, checks bigfoot sighting webpages, and who knows what else .

[guytheninja]

Originally Posted by tokenuser

Similar.

My first encounter was in a highschool. Our year 9/10 Computer Studies class (1984/85) was fortunate that we could use the Apple ][ labs at the university for our classes early on a Monday morning. I got to play with a Lisa there, and we were allowed to explore the local Unix server a little as well (trivia - University of Wollongong - my Alma Mater - did the first code port of Unix from one platform to another). I had no computer contact through senior highschool except for using a IBM PCjr (Peanut) our school had won.

My first internet experience was with AOL and the 2400 baud experience . Also, when I first met Unix/Solaris was in 2000-2001, and I know that Unix existed before that. But I do remember an ancient computer --- a computer that was so old that it was old when I was a 10 year old kid.

The rainbow by DEC
http://www.cedmagic.com/history/dec-rainbow.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_100

This computer was a part of my granddad's business. It would dial out (with a 1200 baud connection) to a mainframe somewhere and allow you to input information into the remote computer. In the first floppy drive, you inserted the operating system. In the second, you inserted the application. It didn't have a hard drive. I think it ran on MSDOS 3.0 or 5.0. However, when it was finally retired --- I couldn't get it to work.

Originally Posted by tokenuser

There was no WWW in 1988. But, in addition to Gopher, Veronica, Archie, we also accessed WAIS - the Wide Area Information Service, which in many ways is the grandfather of the WWW.

I played around a little with Lynx (a non gui www browser) once the www started to come alive, but I got my first GUI browser via a mailed floppy disc from my GF (now wife) who was studying in the US in 1993. Mosaic.

I have heard about Gopher (never used it); however Veronica, Archie, and WAIS are all new to me. This stuff was before my time.

Humorously enough though, I know about Lynx . Lynx is still around. I have no idea why it is still around, but it is. The first time I saw Lynx was at the public library. The librarians used Lynx because they didn't want the patrons to be surfing for porn.

If you want to relive the old days... You can install Lynx with "apt-get install lynx" if you have Ubuntu/Debian. http://lynx.isc.org/

[danhauk]

Originally Posted by Guytheninja

I don't remember that program, but what I do remember is Excite Virtual Chat (I think that is the name).
http://web.archive.org/web/199704290...chat/?a-chch-t

You would download the chat software and basically use a bitmap file as an avatar. When you entered the chatroom, it looked like a 2D overhead view of a room with avatar pictures. When someone else would speak, their avatar would produce a bubble with text. I thought for sure the old way of doing chat rooms would die off and this would be the next big thing --- I was hilariously wrong .

That kind of sounds like the MS Comic Chat thing that they had out for a little while. I never really got into it, but tried it out. Basically it looked like a comic strip with you and your friend's characters, speech bubbles would pop up when you sent a message, etc. I believe that's what Comic Sans was originally developed for.

I think I found what I was talking about. They were called AOL Progs or Proggies. They had a ton of stuff you could do that are pretty much banned now. Here is a link to one of the programs that you can see what they did: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOHell
The one I had was called Fire Toolz I think. Not sure, I just remember the splash screen played Prodigy while it loaded for some reason.