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My first computer was a trash 80, 1979, with 4k memory for $500 bucks and I had to use a tv for a monitor. In 1983 I got a TI for $50 with 64 k memory and then I splurged with a dual floppy in 1988. Still no internet. Paid $1200 for the dual floppy. In 1995 I got an HP for $1200 at Office Depot. I used AOL for a short few months and then got a local account and started building web pages. I had Hollywood-Vine.com until 1999 and I was getting 70,000 hits and month on the site. I went off the net for a few years and returned in 2007 and I now have 15 websites and 10 forums and 4 justin tv sites.
Oh yes, I learned computers using machine language and fortran at UT Austin in 1967.
Technically - I guess I first started using it in 1989 as a college freshman when I had email. But I had no clue back then of "The Internet". In terms of using it the way we use it today (as in surfing the world wide web with a browser), that's probably through my parents Prodigy account ~93/94.
A traditional BBS was NOT networked - it was a stand-alone system that you dialed directly into in order to take part in whatever services it had to offer. That's what I consider to be a "BBS".
Web based message forums are often considered to be what traditional BBSs evolved into, but that's not accurate. Social forums were/are just one aspect of the the traditional BBS. They also had games, file repositories, interactive live chat, etc.
CD is a web based message forum. I flatly reject the notion that message forums are "new-style" BBSs. A traditional BBS was and is much more than that.
I did not have DSL at home until about 6-8 months ago, and 1.5Mbps is the fastest speed I can get reliably.
We were on dial-up until 3 years ago when our city started a microwave wireless internet service; average speed was 200Kbps. If you lived in the city you could get 768Kbps reliably.
Location: Mableton, GA USA (NW Atlanta suburb, 4 miles OTP)
11,334 posts, read 26,050,426 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nurit
As this is a "chilling out" section, maybe we can share some memories. When was the first time you used the internet?
Hmmm. 1992? I was pretty active on BBS networks like RIME and Fido (and I'Link, and Intellec, and a few others) before that, but it seems to me that I ended up getting e-mail on AOL and Delphi and gopher access on Delphi around the same time. And Exec-PC, too.
We had MECC's Timesharing System in high school, various connected VAXen in college (VAX PHONE!), and DDPNet at Unisys in the Twin Cities, but non of that was TCP/IP.
Location: Mableton, GA USA (NW Atlanta suburb, 4 miles OTP)
11,334 posts, read 26,050,426 times
Reputation: 3995
Quote:
Originally Posted by NY Annie
You don't think a BBS is part of the internet?
You are on a BBS - yup, CD is a "new-style" BBS.
I can use SLiMeR on C-D? w00t!
By the way, if you have a nifty Zmodem-capable Telnet client like mTelnet, you can telnet to Exec-PC (which is still up and running under Curt's care) and see what ANSI graphics were like.
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* SLMR 2.1a * The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then
* Prootwadl's Virtual BBS in Mableton, GA USA
I got my first computer ( Atari ) in beginning of 80's, then Commodore 64 , then IBM PC with MS-DOS and Internet connection early 90's. Dial up of course, but it was still lots of fun
Internet proper, probably 93' with Mosaic browser, when sites were 99.999% text based, and graphics were unfriendly to dial-up users.
No search engines, you bought books 'directories' that listed URL's.
One site would have links to the next site, it was really feeling your way around in the dark.
I had been involved in BBS's since the late 70's, originally at the blazing speed of 300 baud with an Atari 800 with a staggering 64K of RAM
Finely moved to 1200 baud (hey! 4 times faster!) and services like Delphi. Forget the name of the service but there was also a service where you dialed into a local number, typed in codes that linked you to a modem in a major city, where you could use that modem to dial BBS's local to that modem. Met some cool people doing that, all running a BBS out of their basement.
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with an Atari 800 with a staggering 64K of RAM 
