Jan 1996. First "real" job outta college. However I used to use dialup modem in the late 80s to get on chats about random crap with my Apple 2.
Speaking of bulletin boards, 14.4k, 28.8k modems, sysops, co-sysops, and the rest... Did anyone ever get into pirating warez during those days? Anyone remember INC, FiRM, Humble Guys, etc..?
Around 1995, when I first signed up for Compuserve. But there was no actual world wide web service. Compuserve was just an online portal where members were part of a big community. To get on the actual internet, you had to get something called Mosaic. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out how Mosaic worked, so I didn't have actual web access for two years later. But this was me upon getting internet for the first time:
Compuserve and Air Warrior. My cubemate and I would totally wreck that place with our bombings - so much so that our own side started shooting at us because all of the enemy's planes sucked so bad (and wouldn't put up a good dog fight) from our multiple raids on the factories. Then one time we took the long journey with an anti-aircraft gun and parked it over where the enemy planes materialize. We' take them out the very second they joined. Funny for us - to see their chatter about faulty software and general confusion - not good for game playing. We were like a third side.
I think mine was about 97-98. I was in 6-7th grade and I remember it clearly. That was around the time that I started playing the Rainbow Six games online. That was also when I found out about online chatting.. I think the website that I went to was Mplayer or something. I remember lying about my age a lot, trying to be older. Also who could forget their first full frontal, unlimited pr0n. I remember getting caught pretty much on a weekly basis watching those. Damn that was a long time ago.
I always love reading Deckard's response to "the first time you..." threads because everybody thinks they were cool using their modems and stuff and Deckard throws the smack down with "I was sittin' around with Moses - we were hammering out some tablets..."
First of all, some of y'all better check your memories, because you're calling out baud rates that didn't even exist... lol. "I remember connecting at 1237 baud..." It reminds me of the times we used to sit around arguing baud rate vs. bps on BBS's. I used to be on several bulletin boards in the Houston area - many I've forgotten - since the mid 80's, I think. That was when I got my first computer - an Apple //e (with the enhanced memory). The first BBS I ever got on was either a Catholic BBS (not sure how I got that) or the Houston Public Library's bbs. I used to run a Wildcat board on the FIDO network back in the late 80's and early 90's. I used Intermail (I still have the manual at my parents' house) to move Usenet newsgroups through my board and around the network. That was my first experience with the Internet. So I guess around the late 80's - early 90's.
I connected a few times with my Commodore 64 back in the early '80s. i was inspired by War Games. I got on a chat room and there was a guy in it called "The Silver Surfer". A couple of years later I saw him on the Geraldo Rivera Show about "people who met using their computers". I didn't get back on until around 1995. I remember going to nerdworld.com for Houston Rockets info.
The first time I ever logged on to the internet was in computer class my junior year of high school, 1994. I was stoked because the school used Prodigy, and at that point Prodigy was the only service that carried ESPNet.
I used one of those at a friend's house in the '80's... on an "IBM clone" -remember those? It was like taboooooooo... I remember he had a disk he could run that made the computer sound like it had water in it... I scared our high school into making sure the modems were turned off after hours in my junior year ('89-'90). I somehow *cough*hacked*cough* the school's grades database... or so the rumor stated. (I'll never tell - no really, I didn't really... or did I?) I would try and make sense out of the old bbs stuff from my mom's work computer... in '90-'92 on another "clone" 8088? Pre-286 days, pre "intel inside." Anyway, we got a good old Packard Bell in '92... it had a 9600 Baud rate modem, Built-in no less!! Intel was inside! Oh happy day! Wow. On the other hand it's built in T.V. tuner was ahead of it's time and made for some interesting screen caps from cable to try and tweak in paint... On Win 2.0 or 3.1 IIRC... started getting on to it with Prodigy... then AOSmell in late '92 early '93 from home... Finally braved the "real" www in '95 when the college library got a real computer lab. Got my hotmail account because all the cool kids were... houstonrocketeer@hotmail.com - long since NOT mine anymore, if it's even active. SO I guess I had my run-in's with the net since the 80's but have been continuously online with no gaps in some form since '95. And 56k, I'll agree, was light speed when I got it with my Win95 system! I used it up until like '02.
I started using AOL at 95. They were notorious for their slow service and primitive chatrooms. Before the days of torrents or even Napster, AOL's mail system became a cheap substitute of IRC for those cheapskates and criminals who wanted media on their lowly 36k modems. Then there were the programs that would jack up the service for other people. IM bombs that would freeze up an AOL user's computer, email bombs, chatroom scrollers, im phishers that would steal account passwords, and even a CC generator that took advantage of their 30 day free trial. AOHell indeed. I still can't believe AOL bought Time Warner.
Back in the 80's, my little brother use to run one of the only bbs's in South Texas. I remember thinking how cool it was to chat with random people that dialed in. We also shared MIDI files. speaking of MIDI's, did anyone have one of these neato MIDI organizers from Cinco back in the day? <object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rKzmMej8A3c"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/rKzmMej8A3c" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>
1997. Started off with a rip roarin' 150mhz Packard Bell with a 33.6K modem. Spent most of my time knocking around on AOL with my friends and their stupid "mods" and junk.. IM bombs.. email bombs.. basically half the time I was on the net I was busy trying to restart my computer cause some butthole had frozen it. Didn't really use it for anything productive until I moved to Houston in '01 and got into the dorms at UH. There was a special ethernet cable needed to get into the network, and I was the FIRST person on campus to get the cable.. it was move-in day and I was just chatting with some maintenance guy and asked him if he knew where I could get the cable.. he said sure, went into some basement and brought me one... I plugged in and HOLY CRAP.. going from a 56K modem to that was insane.. I had just discovered napster a few months earlier.. I was downloading entire albums in about 5 seconds.. that was the day I think I truly started using the internet... of course after all the other students got their cables a week later the internet sucked balls again
Man, I SOLD CHEATS TOO!!! I was also one of the first to have a CD burner at my school, and i used to sell CD's for $5.....I made hundreds of dollars doing that.
