What do you guys remember about 90s Internet?

[zerosoma]

Circa 1999.

There was such a buzz regarding technology in these times. It was such a mystery - we didn't have cell phones (well, most of us), our microwaves were all from Sears or JC Penny, most cars still utilized tape decks and everyone knew what side a and side b meant; the impending y2k disaster... I still remember feeling so unsettled by that. Microsoft was the hugest corporation ever it seemed, and you could go to a software (!!!) store and buy Encyclopedia Britannica and Oregon Trail. And in school typewriter class became keyboarding class.

 

[JDW]

1999 I was working for Nortel Networks and I was one of the many that helped light up fiber around the country for the upcoming traffic , Man how time is flying !!

 

[dishdude]

Use the wayback machine and go back to the 90's anytime you want!

https://archive.org/

 

[zerosoma]

Originally Posted By: dishdude
Use the wayback machine and go back to the 90's anytime you want!

https://archive.org/




Yes, I do that frequently. My life is sometimes empty feeling. Haha.

 

[jimbrewer]

I remember it mostly wasn't there. Empty or no web sites were the rule. (by empty I mean that you would put, say, "www.Sears.com" in the address box and you would get a site with the logo of Sears Roebuck, but very little else). There was no Google. the hot-shoe search engine was Alta Vista. The main thing was e-mail which seemed like magic.

 

[artificialist]

I'm laughing about the Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon fan art and fan comics that some of my high school friends would show me back in the 1990s.

 

[Revving2Redline]

Netscape Navigator was all I remember from the 90's. I had a panasonic 3d0 and super nintendo, i didnt need internet lol

 

[sprintman]

Remembering how DEC had real networking that worked (DECnet) while everybody else talked about it.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

NetBEUI? Anyone...???

 

[Tdbo]

Blue light internet,free from K-Mart.

 

[LazyPrizm]

Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
NetBEUI? Anyone...???

Ugh, IPX/SPX. And AppleTalk, and Token Ring, and Banyan VINES and all those other terrible network architectures/protocols that were finally killed by IP over cheap 10BaseT.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: LazyPrizm
Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
NetBEUI? Anyone...???

Ugh, IPX/SPX. And AppleTalk, and Token Ring, and Banyan VINES and all those other terrible network architectures/protocols that were finally killed by IP over cheap 10BaseT.


Oh, and Client Services for Netware......

My first experience with the "Internet" was dialing into the local EDU VAX with our 8088 using Procomm Plus on 2400 baud. They had primitive text "web browsing" as well as an e-mail client that you could use to send to other people who had an e-mail address. In the case of my dad, that was people at other Edu's.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Oh the joys of NWIP
http://support.novell.com/techcenter/articles/dnd19960604.html

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Originally Posted By: OVERKILL


Oh, and Client Services for Netware......





I worked with a guy at MS, their Unix guy(!) back a good 12-13 years ago to work on an issue with Clien32-based machines and Services for Netware on Win2000. Took us 11 months to get it resolved.

The good ol' days.

 

[Virtuoso]

I ran a one-line SpitFire BBS from '92-94. Most of the time it was only 2,400 baud..eventually upgraded to 14.4, but lost time to keep up with it.

LORD, BRE/SRE, TradeWars, NightOwls v7 CDRom downloads...

For being a one modem BBS it was pretty good! I do miss those days.

Internet in the '90s? Baby steps.

 

[L_Sludger]

I remember in the 90s internet the following things:
1) sincerity
2) decorum
3) fewer advertisements
4) (most important) back then, it wasn't sally soccer mom, joe six-pack, and their spawn online. it was a realm of technically adept people, and it worked. Now it's turned into a soup of annoyance, intrusiveness, pervasiveness, and everything else that defines the word "perversion"

 

[supton]

Originally Posted By: uc50ic4more
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.


Would be slow, but I bet it could be done. Circa WWII a great deal of communications was in code, 5 letter groups, where it was pure gibberish--until it was decoded, it was just random letters and numbers, parsed into 5 digit words. Imagine sending and receiving 5 digit "words" for your shift at the desk! No idea what you were sending and receiving. And sending on a straight key...

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Computer Shopper, December 1987, loved this publication:

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Who here used Microsoft Bob, the birthplace of Clippy?

http://www.telecommander.com/pics/links/...oft_Bob_1_0.htm

or Norton Desktop for Windows?
http://toastytech.com/guis/ndw.html

 

[LazyPrizm]

Hah, I remember when the nearby Egghead Software (which was inside a Staples) was pushing Microsoft Bob. I was only a kid but I didn't see the point of it. We stayed on DOS 5.0.

Around 1997-8 I briefly had use of a PPP account, and had to install Win 3.1 + Trumpet Winsock to finally get graphical web browsing at home. NCSA Mosaic, Cello, there was some other browser I tried...