When, Where & How Did You First Connect to Cyberspace?

[MDJAK]

I bought my first computer from a company in California called Comtrade. A very nice Asian gentleman always answered the phone there. He may have been a one man show. I thing it was a 486 processor. This was back in 1993. That's when I signed on to AOL with the name MDJAK, which is the five initials of my family.

I've been addicted ever since. My cable modem went out tonight and I realized how much I am addicted.

How about you? How long you been connected?

mark

PS: That Comtrade computer still works.

[cosworth]

1992, Earthshine BBS. Mail took a couple days to get delivered...

Took a break for a bit, bought a belt and at-shirt online from the library at the school i worked at as my first "internet" purchase.

Saw my first online porn in Blaine, Washington in 1998. It involved feces and I was awestruck.

My first website same a year later. A year after that I got my domain name that was my name. Yeah, hooked.

[liza]

I'm a late bloomer. Didn't have internet until January of 1999. And I wouldn't have gotten it then had my significant other not connected it for me as a surprise. My housework has suffered ever since then. :)

[saravrose]

I remember doing research on the internet at the library in the fifth grade. A paper about bald eagles..

[Quad]

Don't remember. I think those brain cells must have died off. As far as computers I taught computing on CP/M machines at one time.

[Tom W]

'91 or '92 - somewhere in that time frame. Had added a 9600 baud modem to my sluggish 486. Like Mark, I was on AOL, at least for a couple of years. Then moved up to 56K, and finally, cable. I'm still on cable, and have been since around 2002.

[joshandlauri]

I guess 99 or so on my 133mhz, 2gb hard drive, using bluelight.com and netzero.com (free services) then I went to cable and then DSL to save some money, I now have my 2.0/512/80 gig/250 external (soon 2gig) and Verizon DSL. I spend way too much time on this web site.

[ayotnoms]

An AOL account with a 9.6 modem. After using 1200 bps at work, I thought it was blazing speed. Then came 14.4 and shortly thereafter, 56Kbps.

...seems like ages ago.

:)

[John_B]

I was running a wildcat BBS starting in 1989 back in the 1200/2400bps days on my 286 which replaced my 8088. Then got an account with Prodigy in the 9600bps days, then Compuserve and finally an ISP account. Ahh the old days :lol: got my first top dollar digital camera in 1991 a 320x240 P&S <--don't miss that thing :lol:
Kind of like watching an original Star Trek :)

[JaGWiRE]

When I was probably 3 or 4, I'm guessing '94 or '95.

[rhys]

Probably around 1994 on the real internet although I was hacking my way around a college network in 1984.

[Evan Idler]

I started with a 1200/2400 baud dialup back in 84, connected to my trusty 8088, then got a 19.2K baud RF link from home to the local University in 89. Now using a Cable modem at 20 MBits/Sec at home. But prefere the 250 MBits/Sec connection at work ;-)

--Evan

[sapearl]

I first connected to the Cleveland Freenet in 1986, which if I'm not mistaken was the first community-wide BBS system in the U.S. at the time. It was based on the CWRU campus..... used an Epson 286 for the job. A few years later I "discovered" gateways for getting to other library systems in the country and around the world.

[dicky109]

Late 80's or early 90's. I'm a Pharmacist and a reference site was sponsored by one of the drug manufacturers. Free dial-up access and the computer was also free (provided by a drug wholesaler to place orders with them).

I can remember saying that I'm glad it was free, since I wouldn't pay for something like AOL. The internet was certainly not anything I'd ever really need to use; it was just a luxury and a gimmick.

Glad to be proven correct once again!:o

[kram]

I had a 'text only' account in office in 1996. And 1 year later, a 'graphics enabled' internet access became part of my 'total comp' at work :)

[Ronald S. Jr.]

I was probably 1996-1997. I was 12 years old or so, and we went up to Sears and snagged a Packard Bell Platinum 266mhz Pentium II (at least I think it was a II..did they have them back then?). Dial-up, of course. Clarity Connect. I honestly don't remember what we used on the internet then. I remember seeing AIM for the first time, as well as my mother doing online banking. I mostly just played "Chip's Challenge", "Ski Free", or the old Solitaire. Windows 95, baby.

[Zepher]

Bought my Amiga 3000 back in Oct of 92. A few months later I bought an external Supra 2400 modem ($150, iirc) and then started going online to BBS's and IRC.

[Woolburr]

November of 1975....I could be more specific as to the particulars, but then I would be forced to use the "flashie thingie" on you.

[thomascanty]

1982, with a Commodore 64 computer and a 300-baud acoustical modem. Those were fun times.

[GilesGuthrie]

I did some mucking about on BBSs in the late 80s, but it was usually with a mate and his computer, so I don't count it.

My first internet experience was late in 1991, on the Solaris network at University. E-mail and Usenet were about the extent of it. My first web site went up soon after Mosaic 0.5 came out, which I think was late-92. Online in the house came four years later, 33.6Kbps through Pipex internet on a Gateway Pentium-200, and broadband through cable at 512Kbps (now up to 10Mb) in May 2001. I bought my first domain name (giles-guthrie.com) in about Feb 2000.

[Stefan A]

My parents had it before me. In the early 90's they were hooked up to prodigy checking stocks and stuff like that. I was early in college and had no interest in it. But after college and once I moved out and got a job, I got connected. It was late 1995 and I used AOL and chose the name tubaboyy. I don't use that name anymore but I still manage to get teased for it :).

I had a Commodore 64 as well with a modem. I don't remember what I used it for. But we loved the Commodore.

Stefan

[Becca]

In the early 90's I had a cast-off HP from work which still had a free trial for Prodigy and AOL, so I tried both. I stuck with Prodigy and used them until just last year when I finally bit the bullet and upgraded to a cable modem.

[zacker]

we got our first in (* ( I think because we had to wait for windows (* to come out before my father in law would go get one for us..lol) we got a Packard Bell with a canon Inkjet.. I thought we had it made, we were gonna get rich working on the Net and we were going to be able to create such art and stuff with all the cool "computerized" programs they had out....lol little did i know..

[runninmann]

'84 or '85 on an IBM PCjr, 8088 processor with upgrade to 512kb memory and 2nd 5-1/4" floppy drive (no HD) using a 300 baud modem and long distance calling (I don't think 800 numbers had even been introduced yet, but I could be wrong) between Dayton and Columbus, Ohio on CompuServe and one other BBS whose name I can't remember.

[KIPAX]

15+ years ago. Atari BBS systems and then went on internet using an AtariST 520 with no HD .. just half a mb of memory and a 720floppy.. thank goodness for shell accounts :) As we didn't have a local BBS then the phone bill dropped down when i went on the internet :) most peoples went up..

[KatmanDu]

Around '82 or '83, with a Color Computer II and a 300 baud modem; not "Internet" yet, but various tymnet and arpanet nodes and BBS's. I got in trouble for running up a compuserve bill and rewiring our old hardwired phones to accept a phone jack. First dial-up ISP I used was probably around '93 or so; ran a two-line Oracle BBS around that time. First cable modem was like a godsend. :)

[theague]

I forget the BBS's that I used to connect to but I was using a 1200 bps modem on my dad's 286 I believe. I think I first started on the "internet" when I was about 10 or 11. I was downloading some simple games and playing some online games as a matter of fact. There was a text based RPG forget the name and a lot of simple card games. lol I was hooked and have been ever since. I remember prodigy, compuserve and early AO(hell). Fun times! I've been on the net ever since.

[gjl711]

Hmmm… I guess the first would be when I worked at KeyCom electronic publishing in 1982. They provided a product that would later become the WEB as we know today. I later worked at Bell labs we had access to ARPANET and though not exactly what the WEB is today, nearly all of the concepts were there. Later, switched over to USENET which was pretty much the same thing, sort of.. Actually, this forum is very USENETish and operates about the same way. Maybe that’s why I am comfortable here. I guess the first ISP though would have bee CompuServe somewhere in the mid 80s.

[JCR]

internet unsure, first wan experience was 20 yrs ago during my first college course (I dropped out of that to return 7 years later)
I won't tell you what I got upto on that dialin but I will say I knew exactly which new motorcycle models were coming out and how much they would cost, there were no concrete laws against it at that time, there are quite a few now ;)

[gjl711]

...I won't tell you what I got upto on that dialin but I will say I knew exactly which new motorcycle models were coming out and how much they would cost, there were no concrete laws against it at that time, there are quite a few now ;) Hmmm... there were concrete laws back then. It's just that no one paid attention to them because the cops of the time were using the techo-equivilent of a tricycle. ;):)

[thomascanty]

Hmmm... there were concrete laws back then. It's just that no one paid attention to them because the cops of the time were using the techo-equivilent of a tricycle. ;):)

In 1984 or 1985, my dad was dating a woman who had a son that had been busted for hacking into some major corporate computer systems (banks and things -- I can't remember if any government computers were involved).

He once gave me a tape (the big reel kind -- what were those called? 9-track?) with all kinds of kewl warez for me to use on the DEC VAX systems we used at work at the time.

[Mark_Cohran]

Mid-80's sometime....I know I was living in Charleston, SC and I hooked up to a local Atari BBS.

[4x4rock]

Back in late 80's and early 90's. I started out with the IBM 8086 with 10 MB HD. I couldn't fill up the HD at all.

The I upgraded to the 8088 with 40 MB MFM drive, which was HUGE!

The 286 with no math-co then manually upgraded the math-co on it. The the 386 turbo, then 486 heheh.

BBS time was fun back then. Then IRC etc...

I remember I bought a 130MB Maxtor HD for $350 and a 1x Rihco cd burner for $400. :D

[PalmBayFlo]

Does anyone remember Plink? Portal? GEnie? Must've been the early 80's that I got hooked with my Atari puter and 300 baud modem....wowza!! Also was hooked on the game Zork...ahhh sweet memories!

[Tom W]

I first connected to the Cleveland Freenet in 1986, which if I'm not mistaken was the first community-wide BBS system in the U.S. at the time. It was based on the CWRU campus..... used an Epson 286 for the job. A few years later I "discovered" gateways for getting to other library systems in the country and around the world.


I remember freenet! Spent a little time there, but not much.

AOL with a 9600 was terribly slow, even with simple text like usenet. Horrible by today's standards, but it did have a cool, pioneering feeling to it.

[Fernando]

How about you? How long you been connected?


How long? Well let's see, I was 12 and now I'm 38. The only problem was that I could only email one person and that person was my dad.

We had a dedicated terminal. It looked like a typerwriter and printed out the downloaded information on thermal roll paper. It had an acoustic coupler on the back that we put the phone on.

We then had a Pet 16, a RS TRS-80, an Apple II, a Leading Edge Model D, than a whole bunch of IBM and Apple Machines. My last four have all been Dells; three desktops and one laptop.

My dad has been in IT since 1967 so I was always around the stuff.

-F

[august23]

98' My mother just got me dial up and I was so happy. The minute she left for work, I was on my first porn site. I still remember which one it was too. :p

[calicokat]

1998 with a crappy compaq computer, those were the days, I still miss the dial up connection sound :lol:

[Nidz]

I joined the Interweb back around 1994. I used Netscape Version 2 which back then was so buggy it used to crash if i stopped it while it was loading a web page (which back then pretty much only consisted of text and a few GIF files) . That ran on a 28.8kbps modem. I think It was around the time I used to have a 386. Before that I was on BBS's with a 9600 baud modem and before that I had one that ran as a blistering speed of 2400 baud.

Back then It was so futuristic to have a Computer so small it could fit on your desk. My old man worked at IBM in the 1970's and told me stories about computer's as big as a floor of a building that would process about the same as a laptop does today. Technology sure moves quickly.

[Becca]

We had a dedicated terminal. It looked like a typerwriter and printed out the downloaded information on thermal roll paper. It had an acoustic coupler on the back that we put the phone on.


We had one of those DECwriters when I was in high school. There was a group of what would be called "geeks" today that used to exchange messages between schools in our district. And yes, I was one of those geeks! :)

[4x4rock]

My old man worked at IBM in the 1970's and told me stories about computer's as big as a floor of a building that would process about the same as a laptop does today. Technology sure moves quickly.


I worked for IBM wafer fabrication production line in the late 90s and there were some old computer and HD displayed in the inhouse museum.

They were huge. And you should see the first platers, heads and control arms for the HD :D

Walking in the clean room is a cool experience though.

Yup, technology really moved fast.

[cylentka]

In about 1994,we got spiffy new computers at work with modems for online legal research. I used the fax machine line to dial into AOL (I think it was version 1.5,lol) and got hooked to the online life. I also got slapped with a HUGE bill every month because it was pay-by-the-minute back then! :shock: It was heaven when the internet became (more or less) free.

[txduggan]

November of 1975....I could be more specific as to the particulars, but then I would be forced to use the "flashie thingie" on you.

Sounds like someone worked for the DoD :)

That is, if my memory serves.....

My old IBM SE was supposedly part of that group....he was Navy Intel reserves....

Me? '84 or '85 .... BBS' and the community college's IBM PC ... gack!

Tom D

[txduggan]

I worked for IBM wafer fabrication production line in the late 90s and there were some old computer and HD displayed in the inhouse museum.

They were huge. And you should see the first platers, heads and control arms for the HD :D

Walking in the clean room is a cool experience though.

Yup, technology really moved fast.

I still work with those suckers :)

The footprints have shrunk dramatically...we don't have the latest yet (IBM z9) but we have a few z990's; they're about as big as one of those silver commercial refridgerators you find in many business cafeterias...

I kept an old 3444 disk module from my first mainframe job back in the early 80's...I affectionately call it "The Jupiter 2" ;)

Tom D

[rdricks]

Does anyone remember Plink? Portal? GEnie? Must've been the early 80's that I got hooked with my Atari puter and 300 baud modem....wowza!! Also was hooked on the game Zork...ahhh sweet memories!

Classic times. Remember reading the text as it was downloading at 300 baud? And Zork, many hours spent on that one. I don't miss putting the tape in the recorder and hitting "Play" to load a program. Although it made that first floppy drive seem incredible! I still remember the day I came home with a second floppy disk drive - I had an impressive setup!

-Ryan

[Lord_Malone]

My parents bought my first computer for me when I was a kid still in elementary school (circa 1982-83). It was a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A, and I used it to play computer games (game cartridges back then).

http://oldcomputers.net/pics/ti-994a.jpg

Though I heard much about it, I didn't actually start using the internet until some time in late 1997. I was still relatively new to the Army and got a job working in the S-3 shop at the battalion I was assigned to. This was the first time I had this much access to a computer that was connected. I think my first internet search was looking for reviews on the movie Titanic. LOL I remember Maxim magazine had just started out and I kept seeing ads for it on the Sports Illustrated ( or was it ESPN?) web site. I finally made my first computer purchase (Gateway - I can't remember the model number or specs, but I was pretty juiced that it had a 56K modem and a 20gb hard drive!) in early 2000. I remember reading an article that said if you didn't own a computer by the year 2000 and weren't connected to the information superhighway, you will be way behind the power curve. Oh, and I connected via "free net". It was a free german based dial-up service I used because I was living in Germany at the time and didn't have access to AOL or anything like that.

Nowadays, I don't know where I would be without one. I rely on a computer to conduct day to day business and for entertainment purposes. It's so much a part of my life that I have withdrawls if I can't get on-line access often (imagine what I had to go through in Iraq!). LOL

These days I've tried to make a conscience effort to get out more and spend less time on it. There is such a thing as spending too much time in cyber space, which can lead to a very unhealthy lifestyle. We can never totally neglect good old fashioned human interaction. ;) Computers are now an inseperable part of our lives.

[mikerault]

In 1983 with my Tandy 1000 on PCLINK before it was bought by AOL (AOL was originally a Apple centric place until us PC'ers contaminated it...:) )

Mike

[Lord_Malone]

November of 1975....I could be more specific as to the particulars, but then I would be forced to use the "flashie thingie" on you.

:shock:

So when are we going to have that beer?

[Lord_Malone]

You old computer hacks are losing me with all this talk about "BBS" and "IRC". As far as I know, BBS is a german wheel manufacturer!

[Lord_Malone]

First time was 1978 using a Sol-20 Terminal Computer by Processor Technology. It had a 300 baud modem that was a telephone cradle. The monitor was a 9" Sony monochrome display.

I can still see the data scrolling across the bottom of the monitor.


What is this "baud" you people speak of? :confused:

Please don't force me to use Google or Wikipedia. :(

[Fade2]

Bought my 1st computer in 1998, it was a Compaq. A virus magnet lol
That thing was top of the line for about 10 minutes and BAM! New bigger systems were popping up everywhere. Had AOL version 3.0! That was a big deal then.

[Lord_Malone]

I know you're very busy manufacturing and marketing the Man-Panties, so let me help you:



Baud

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In telecommunications (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications) and electronics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronics), baud (pronounced /bɔːd/, unit symbol "Bd"), is a measure of the symbol rate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol_rate); that is, the number of distinct symbol changes (signalling events) made to the transmission medium per second (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second) in a digitally modulated (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modulation) signal. The term baud rate is also commonly used to refer to the symbol rate. The baud is named after Emile Baudot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile_Baudot), the inventor of the Baudot code (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code) for telegraphy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraphy). The unit was proposed at the International Telegraph Conference (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=International_Telegraph_Conference&action=edit) in 1927 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1927). Early modems used one bit per symbol, so the bit rate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_rate) and the symbol rate were the same. Thus, a 300-bit-per-second modem operated at 300 baud (Bd). This equality led to many people using the term baud or baud rate as an incorrect synonym for bit rate, when in fact the two are often different. If a modem transmits at 1000 Baud (1000 symbols per second) and each symbol carries 3 bits, then the bps is 3000 (1000 symbols per second × 3 bits per symbol).
When bandwidth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth) efficiency is important, as it is in modems, it is sometimes desirable to maximize the information (bits) conveyed by each symbol sent. More generally, an optimal symbol set design must take into account channel bandwidth, desired information rate, noise characteristics of the channel and the receiver, and receiver and decoder complexity.
For example: 250 Bd means that 250 symbols are transmitted per second. If 16 different symbols are used, each symbol can be encoded with a minimum of 4 bits (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit) of information. In each second, 250 symbols are transmitted, so if each one is encoded with 4 bits of information, then 1000 bits of information will be transmitted per second.
Note: Baud should not be confused with data rate in "bits per second (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bits_per_second)" (or bytes per second, etc.). Each symbol transmitted can carry one or more bits (for example, 8 bits in 256-QAM modulation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrature_amplitude_modulation)) of information. When each symbol is binary it carries just one bit, so baud and bit rate are equal. This is a cheap, simple encoding. However, it's common to make better use of channel bandwidth by encoding multiple bits per symbol. This reduces the time required to send a given quantity of data, and it's exactly how good modems, FDDI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FDDI) and 100/1000 Mbit/s Ethernet LANs, and so on, achieve high data rates. Thus, a 2400 bit/s modem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem) actually transmits at 600 baud (600 symbol/s), where each quadrature amplitude modulation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrature_amplitude_modulation) symbol carries four bits of information (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory). And further, 1000 Mbit/s Ethernet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet) LAN cables use multiple wire pairs and multiple bits per symbol to encode their data payloads. Specifically, 1000BASE-T uses 4 wire pairs and 2 data bits per symbol to get a symbol rate of 125MBaud.
A clear example of the difference between baud (or signalling rate) and the data rate (or bit rate) is a man using a single semaphore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_%28communication%29) flag. He can move his arm to a new position once each second, so his signalling rate (baud) is 1 symbol per second. However, the flag can be held in one of eight distinct positions: Straight up, 45 degrees left, 90 degrees left, 135 degrees left, straight down (which is the rest state, where he is sending no signal), 135 degrees right, 90 degrees right, and 45 degrees right. This means each signal carries three bits of information, as it takes 3 binary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_numeral_system) digits to encode 8 distinct states – so the data rate is 3 bits per second. In the Navy, more than one flag pattern and arm can be used at once, so the combinations of these produce many symbols, each conveying several bits, thus a higher data rate.

:D

Source: www.wikipedia.org (http://www.wikipedia.org)

Thanks, Karl! I was too busy fighting in the lens forum. :(

And lazy too!

[pcasciola]

Sore subject. I moved back to New Jersey from California in the early-90s and got really interested in this stuff, using Lynx as a browser starting around 1992-93. A friend and I started a local ISP business in 1996-97 while a couple of friends did the same back in California. Ours was called MyHost Internet and we peaked at about 1500 users before selling, but our friend's did much better. You may have heard of them. Their's was called NetZero. :rolleyes:

[theflyingkiwi]

it was back in 1994 (if I remember correctly) got my first computer with a modem installed. wow. 486m with sound card cd-rom drive so I could have this cool thing called multimedia. :) the modem was a 14.4. I first connected to a BBS, then I started to hear about this thing called the internet. hmmm interesting I thought, better checked it out, and been on it ever since.

I believe the first things I looked for were either Star Trek or porn. But I think star trek won :)

[Woolburr]

Sounds like someone worked for the DoD :)

That is, if my memory serves.....

My old IBM SE was supposedly part of that group....he was Navy Intel reserves....
Tom D

All I can tell you is that no matter what he says, Al Gore was nowhere around.

:shock:

So when are we going to have that beer?

I'll give you a shout when I get back from Florida...adjusting my schedule a bit with the cancellation of the shuttle launch and the addition of the decommissioning of an old friend.

[Lord_Malone]

All I can tell you is that no matter what he says, Al Gore was nowhere around.



I'll give you a shout when I get back from Florida...adjusting my schedule a bit with the cancellation of the shuttle launch and the addition of the decommissioning of an old friend.

Right. Keep me in the loop.

[MagicallyDelicious]

My mum bought me my first PC about 9 years ago....I ended up getting totally and utterly addicted to the internet! ouch!

Nowadays I can take it or leave it! haha

[milleker]

I had used the telephone cradle at the mainframe at school but in 1982-83 timeframe I had a 300 bauder. Commodore 64, data cassette drive, Fast Load cartridge.. :)

Remember my first connection to a BBS. Had a chat with the SysOp and I remember typing a sentence and then looking at the screen just to see each character I had typed slowly pop onto the screen.

Later in life the BBS's started going multi-node and multiple people could be online at once. That was a Godsend as most of my teenage life was watching TV in another room and hearing a constant busy signal in the background as my modem had retried connection. Once the funky endzone handshake dance was heard, I remember I had only about a minute to get in there and login or risk disconnection.

And, contrary to popular belief, the 8-bit Commodore oriented BBS parties were MUCH wilder than anything a stinky old IBM'er could come up with..

As for ACTUAL Internet, I remember using WinSock for my Amiga and then being forced to move to IBM when they went belly up. Using Lynx for Web pages (all text, no images - sort of like a telnet session). Pine for e-mail. Lots of fun.

-John

[thomascanty]

And, contrary to popular belief, the 8-bit Commodore oriented BBS parties were MUCH wilder than anything a stinky old IBM'er could come up with..

You aren't kidding! I really miss the old Commodore 64 and Commodore 128 days, and am still friends with many people I met back then. Those were very fun times.

[Lord_Malone]

You aren't kidding! I really miss the old Commodore 64 and Commodore 128 days, and am still friends with many people I met back then. Those were very fun times.

I used to play video games on all my friend's old Commodore 64s. Fun times indeed! ;)

[milleker]

LM, did you always live in Maryland? We probably crossed paths on the local BBS's at one time. Good luck me remembering any of my old aliases though!

C64/128 and Amiga was awesome for games, even the CD32 was neat for its time. My first PC purchase was an old 286 just for playing Scorched Earth - something the big C didn't have.

I used to play video games on all my friend's old Commodore 64s. Fun times indeed! ;)

[CyberDyneSystems]

I'll admit guilt at being an AOL user at first.

I also got "email only" via a neat little product called Juno. They were unique in that you got no web connection, only very brief local calls to get your Email and send it.
I still have that Juno account to this day, but use the Web mail interface instead.
It's still free.

I was on a then nearly state of the art P-100Mhz (P-133 was the fastest available) with a gargantuan 16MB of ram! *man did that cost) and a spacious 512MB hard drive (this was "affordable) as the 1GB desktop ATA drives had just come out)

Other than sending an E-mail, the first thing I did with AOL was to download some "free" software.. :rolleyes:

I dumped AOL when they went "unlimited" ( which actually meant at the time "no one can connect due to busy signals",.. it took a month just to get through to discontinue)

Then it was Earthlink dial up for quite some time... then as soon as it was available I got DSL (cable was never an option in my home, but I was within feet of a major telco switch that the downtown banks used. At that time DSL was only available through odd early adopters.. mine was called "Northwind"
When they went belly up, Verizon was finally offering DSL so I went to Verizon DSL.

[Hellashot]

I connected to the Internet in 1985 and had internet email through the Cleveland Freenet (first of the Freenets in the USA of which all are probably closed). There was the ability to Telnet to other freenets and universities (the first places to connect to the internet - internet that was created in the 1970s for scientists to transfer data).

[thomascanty]

I dumped AOL
...
Then it was Earthlink

Wow... You went from AOL to Earthlink? It's a wonder you didn't abandon the Internet altogether! The one single, solitary, only reason I ever had an Earthlink account is because they bought Primenet and all of our accounts were forcibly switched over. Primenet was the best ISP I've ever had the pleasure of dealing with. Earthlink is, well...It's Earthlink, and I no longer have that account. Enough said.

[pcasciola]

Earthlink was great for me in the mid-90s. Didn't they merge with Erol's or something right around that time? That's right about when I switched to Netcom.

I used to use those phone cradle 300 baud modems back in 80s as well to connect to various BBSs. I think I can type almost that speed now.

[gymell]

In 1992 I worked at the mainframe room at the University of Georgia, and was able to sign up for an email address then. I spent a lot of time on IRC and Bitnet. Also visited various local BBSs with my newly-purchased 286 which had a whole 1MB of ram. I was really into Star Trek at the time so most of my time was spent chatting online about that. I recall someone telling me about Mosaic around 1994. I've had my own website up since 1995 when I first started playing around with HTML. Now I make my living as a computer programmer, mostly writing web-based applications, so it's interesting to look back on those early days and see how things have changed in a relatively short time.

[Lord_Malone]

LM, did you always live in Maryland? We probably crossed paths on the local BBS's at one time. Good luck me remembering any of my old aliases though!

C64/128 and Amiga was awesome for games, even the CD32 was neat for its time. My first PC purchase was an old 286 just for playing Scorched Earth - something the big C didn't have.

No. :(

I just moved to MD last August.

I love BBS wheels. Especially the BBS LM (LeMans). Oh yeah.

[Andy_T]

Well, guess that I qualify as a 'late adopter' at this forum here :D

Got first exposed to Usenet in 89 at the university computer (IBM S38 if I remember correctly), was really active in discussion groups (alt.fan.monthypython and alt.rec.motorcycles come to my mind :wink: ) and quite active in some of the first MUD (multi-user-Dungeon&dragon) sites ... but as this did have some impact on my university degrees, I ended that again...

Then, I remember the field trip we did with the management department of the university to the ETH (Technical University) in Zurich, Switzerland for a seminar on technology transfer, where the professor at the end of the presentation led us to a lab to show us the latest development they were working on that came out of CERN... think it was the 'opera' or 'mosaic' browser that gave a GUI to the usenet ... really nice.

I used Apple's 'Hypercard' system at that time to build up a linked documentation for a seminar ... that was a lot of fun as well.

But luckily, it took some more years before my internet interest materialized that is now taking quite some of my time...

Best regards,
Andy