What do you guys remember about 90s Internet?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Good stuff here. I remember the old 400 baud modems and things we got ourselves into.

But to your point, I first saw the internet (as we know it) in 1995 at school. My college had it and I was on it all of the time. It's basically the same thing it is today for information purposes. Sure, the bandwidth required and things you see are more advanced

My main email remains the one I created in September 1995.
 
Ahhh reminiscing...

First computer was Apple II that I got as a present around 1992 or so (pretty cool at the time)! 2nd was an Apple Macintosh Performa 550 and this was my first experience with the internet at home. I believe it had an external modem and was SLOW.

I remember when we first got DSL. That was the next best thing to electricity!

Anyone remember the TV network ZDTV and the show 'The Screen Savers'. Used to watch that religiously. Looking back, the internet and computers were a bit more "romantic" in a way. Cool things were always coming out and getting better. Now it seems like were so used to high-speed bandwidth and wireless everywhere that it has just became a part of the routine.

Man things sure have changed.
 
I do miss chat rooms and IM'ing. I liked the concept of going into a room room where you'd just pop in and strike up a conversation with random people. Most didn't go anywhere after a couple minutes, but it was cool how you could strike up friendships with people all over the US and world. I remember trying to explain the concept to my boss in the late 90's. He did not get it.

That doesn't really exist today. I don't want to go on Facebook and chat with someone I already know. I liked meeting new people.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: TWG1572
I do miss chat rooms and IM'ing. I liked the concept of going into a room room where you'd just pop in and strike up a conversation with random people. Most didn't go anywhere after a couple minutes, but it was cool how you could strike up friendships with people all over the US and world.


I totally agree, it was a very interesting time, because curious, interesting, and nice folks were all there in the public chat rooms. I used to go on AOL chat rooms all the time, and they had tons of options and narrow interest rooms as well. One of the best things AOL had going for it at the time.
 
I remember the internet being a much nicer place then it is today. For the first several years I just had dialup internet, but there were a lot of interesting websites to check out and there seemed to be a lot less danger on the internet. I bought my first computer in 1995.

I don't remember there being a lot of trolls back in those days like there are today. People who hang around websites and try to harass other people. I came across some interesting websites that people had created for the sake of creativity alone. But there was no bobistheoilguy.com!

And I remember this one ISP I had. They had their servers in this old historic building in a nearby city. They actually had a party for all of their users. I went to the party and it was fun!

I remember sitting at home in front of my Mac computer and everything just worked. Dialup internet was good enough. My dedicated film scanner worked and my photo printer worked. And I thought the good times would last forever.

And then somehow it all changed. The internet became faster but it also became meaner. A person had to worry about their security. You could be attacked online in your own home. Strange trolls would hang out at websites and harass people. In various ways the internet became better but it also became darker.

Yeah, I remember the early days. And now it is all just water flowing down the river to the sea.
 
I remember being in college, and telling my aunt, who was a "corp bigwig" (so it seemed to me at the time....think she was a regional sales manager, haha).......that I was signed up for this thing called "AOL"! She said that was cool, but she had heard something better called the "internet". This was probably 1993 or 94.
 
In college (1984) I had a sysadm job at a university (while a student) making $4.26/hour. We attached to Bitnet with the VAX/VMS 780 I managed. It had e-mail and interactive chat all over the US and Europe and went as far as Israel.

The cool thing was when you sent e-mail, any computer that touched your e-mail would send you a receipt, so you could actually "see" how and who was handling your mail.

Mail was routed through other client machines on the network, sort of a like a star topology. There was no 'point to point' routing like on the internet, stuff was routed thru other clients.

I remember people saying they had to log off because the terminal room was closing and realizing they were 5 time zones away.
 
My dad had email through work (Digital Equipment corp) in 1992-ish and my mom started working at a university that had it. He was stoked he'd have someone to email. We'd all be eating dinner and he'd ask her, "did you get my e-mail" and she'd mumble "yes" and that was that! Rude.
 
MCI offered a plan - 12 hours for $9.99 or thereabouts, so we took it. Quickly graduated to a larger plan, or course. We used dial up until the early 2000's. My wife was getting a degree online and the forum pages were getting so long as to be impractical to use on dial up. Post a reply, go away and do something, come back and load another page, go away....
 
Originally Posted By: Mystic
I remember the internet being a much nicer place then it is today. For the first several years I just had dialup internet, but there were a lot of interesting websites to check out and there seemed to be a lot less danger on the internet. I bought my first computer in 1995.

I don't remember there being a lot of trolls back in those days like there are today. People who hang around websites and try to harass other people. I came across some interesting websites that people had created for the sake of creativity alone. But there was no bobistheoilguy.com!

And I remember this one ISP I had. They had their servers in this old historic building in a nearby city. They actually had a party for all of their users. I went to the party and it was fun!

I remember sitting at home in front of my Mac computer and everything just worked. Dialup internet was good enough. My dedicated film scanner worked and my photo printer worked. And I thought the good times would last forever.

And then somehow it all changed. The internet became faster but it also became meaner. A person had to worry about their security. You could be attacked online in your own home. Strange trolls would hang out at websites and harass people. In various ways the internet became better but it also became darker.

Yeah, I remember the early days. And now it is all just water flowing down the river to the sea.


I came along after it picked up steam ('95 or 96 or thereabouts). I have to wonder if it is because "everyone" can get online now. Used to be it was limited to geeks who managed to have free access, or enough money when not at school. As the cost of internet went down, well... Cost in money terms and in terms of understanding how to interface with the computer and the internet.

*

I think I remember getting a 14.4k modem, and IIRC it was a big jump in speed. Sometimes I wonder about some of the sites I go to, all the fancy graphics and ads, and I wonder if we really have progressed or not.
 
Originally Posted By: supton
Sometimes I wonder about some of the sites I go to, all the fancy graphics and ads, and I wonder if we really have progressed or not.


I like where the technology race has brought us the greatest advancement in the 21st Century ...texting.

One giant leap for mankind. One small step above Morse Code.
 
Originally Posted By: Papa Bear
Originally Posted By: supton
Sometimes I wonder about some of the sites I go to, all the fancy graphics and ads, and I wonder if we really have progressed or not.


I like where the technology race has brought us the greatest advancement in the 21st Century ...texting.

One giant leap for mankind. One small step above Morse Code.

I think it was on the Letterman show many years ago, they had a race between the fastest texter in the US, and 2 guys on morse code machines. Morse code was far faster!
 
Originally Posted By: IndyIan
I think it was on the Letterman show many years ago, they had a race between the fastest texter in the US, and 2 guys on morse code machines. Morse code was far faster!


The contest should have taken place with both participants in a library, then at a public park, then from work, then (in the passenger seat!) on the highway. Then they should have asked the Morse code operators to send an image: I would have loved to see the Morse code guys frantically entering in RGB values per pixel.
 
Our first computers at work were 286/12's with 20MB hard drive. I thought I had really moved up in the world when I bought a Packard-Bell 386 for home....it was on sale down from $1500 to $1200.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom