Your earliest Internet memories

2DMention

2DMention

CAGiversary!
Feedback
5 (100%)
1994 - Surfed the web for the first time in my community college's library on EGM's website NUKE.com

Alta Vista, Webcrawler, Lycos were big deals

I used to spend hours in the computer lab of the dorm basement surfing for Industrial music news on rec.music.industrial newsgroup. Do newsgroups even exist anymore?

I also used to play the same people on Mortal Kombat SNES Xband in 1996.

I remember the site to go for Playstation 1 news for imports was animeplaystation.

I remember the early days of ebay had you do everything manually and allowed you to leave feedback for stuff outside of ebay.
 
My dad brought home some laptop from work...I think it was '95. I dialed in to whatever online provider was on there (not AOL). Upon connecting I was futzed around for a couple minutes and wound up in some chatroom/BBS thing. Within seconds some stranger messaged me, asking if I wanted to trade porn.

First real memories - getting on AOL in late summer '96. Jumped into the WWF AOL chatroom and immediately got a laugh by interjecting that Andre the Giant would be the fourth member of the NWO.

Come to think of it, some of the "friends" I made from that WWF AOL room I still talk to frequently today.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
My first time on the internet was at my cousin's house back around 1990ish. My Uncle worked for Xerox and had a cutting edge computer, the screen was black and green, it ran on DOS and I got to read sports news from San Francisco while I was in Utah! Neat!

But my real internet time was when we got AOL 2.5 installed on our sweet new Windows 95 machine. I lived in a small town so all the jr high kids that had AOL knew each other and we had a little clique. I'm still friends with a number of them today.
 
AOL 1.0 on my friends apple II gs with an external 2400 baud modem. Not much to do on there really - chatrooms and email.

I got MY first computer (we'd had several going back probably 10 years - our main one though for many years was an IBM PS2 Model 30) one christmas when I was in high school. I think it was probably Dec. of 92. It was a Gateway with a 66mhz processor! Plus - It had a freakin' 14.4 baud modem in it, but... the only ISP in our town was AOL and they had a modem bank of probably 4 modems - all 2400 baud... AOL was a bit more advanced and you could even have file attachments to emails ;) I had a list of local bbs (bulletin board systems) and a couple of my friends even had their own bbs so I did a bit of that as well. When I went off to college in 1994 I got away from AOL and got on teh intarwebs with Mindspring (ISP based in Atlanta - they were acquired by Earthlink several years later I believe.) Netscape navigator and eudora pro for email. When I started grad school in 2000 I got a cable modem and boy was that a speedy thing! (coincidentally I still use the same cable modem today - a very old motorola surfboard - just haven't had any need to upgrade - we are on a 5/1 plan and it does just fine.)

I played a lot of quake II and unreal tourney online -dial-up and cable (played a ton of fragball in UT). I remember my first online console experience was with some futuristic racing game on dreamcast (can't even remember the name).
 
Probably about 1995, 1996 for us to get full internet with 28.8 dial up. Had AOL on 14.4 for a year or two before that but I didn't use it much.

We lived out in the boonies, didn't get a computer until part way into high school. Parents still only have dial up. Well technically they use the mobile internet now, but only get 1x (no 3G) so not much faster than the dial up. Maybe get 100kbps down if they have a good signal at the time.

Back then I mainly surfed video game sites (old N64 forums etc.) and sports news stuff and used the IM programs to chat with friends. Was too slow to do much of anything with.
 
* Realizing the number for Prodigy was long distance and getting a bill for that
* Getting the numbers for BBS from the local comic shop. Calling those and downloading Commander Keen.
* Lying about my age to get into the 'adult' section of said Bulletin Boards.
 
I actually used one of these around 1986. That thing on the right is a telephone :D My friends older brother would dial us into various BBS's.

acoustic_modem.jpg
 
I think it was 96 when I first got online, had a 386 comp w/ an external modem.. was running Aol 2.0, spent a lot of time in chat rooms, newsgroups for message boards. I remember the first time downloading an MP3, had to go to FTPs and you'd have to upload a song for ratio to be able to download. It'd take about 30 minutes just to download one song.
 
I remember my Dad getting Apogee shareware games off of BBS.

I also remember me, my brother and my sister messing up my Dad's computer by making too many save files in Bio Menace (or at least I think it was Bio Menace). :lol:
 
having my computer get an update to have a 20 something k modem and go online to use AOL. Not able to use phone and go online as they use the same phone line
 
I can't remember too much about my first experiences online, but my first memories of learning about the internet come from the Max Mouse storyline on Ghostwriter. :lol:
 
[quote name='TC']I actually used one of these around 1986. That thing on the right is a telephone :D My friends older brother would dial us into various BBS's.

acoustic_modem.jpg
[/QUOTE]Damn, you could play Thermonuclear War with that thing. ;)

I got my first computer aorund 96, was a IBM Aptiva, pretty good specs for that time. I bought Boot magazine for the reviews and cool demo discs they included, people complained about their attitude, but I loved that magazine. Maximum PC isn't nearly the same. Had AOL on a 28.8k modem for a couple of years before we could get DSL. I never could convince me parents to get a second phone line, man it sucked to be playing a game online and have someone call on the phone. I remember buying a 6gb hard drive to upgrade and paid over $100 for it. Also upgraded the memory, which gave me the opportunity to learn that some 72 pin simm memory had to be installed in pairs, which caused me to return to 32mb stick I bought and get two 16mb sticks instead. Hard to believe that the total 48mb of memory was pretty good for that time.

edit- Oh and the first PC game I ever bought, Doom2. I still remember how all the cheat codes started with ID for ID Software, like IDDQD was one of them I know. I've still got it around here somewhere. Also remember playing Quake for the first time and thinking how awesome it was, I played the demo over and over again before finally buying it.
 
Wow i feel old I remember in the early 90s rocking Windows 3.1 Doom, Wolfenstein, Commander Keen and AOL. I think the the HD was maybe 100mbs? Lots of fun downloading demos, shareware, and other stuff. Played me some quake 2 over the modem fun times.

I remember about 1998ish when I got a machine with a 250mhz processor, 32mbs of ram, win95, and a zip drive. I later installed a 8mb Monster 2 card. Oh those were the days
 
I believe I first got online around 2000 or 2001 (my dad had just bought a windows lol ME). I first started hanging on Nintendo's official site. First two sites I remember staying around for a while were runescape and gameinformer.com

But I try not to relive those days. Dial-up...still painful memories. My mom would ALWAYS be on the phone so I kept getting kicked off the internet / computer at the time and I remember one time trying to play runescape at 3AM just so I wasn't interrupted. Did that for a few weeks on and off until I finally got busted and lost my internet privileges for a week (I think).
 
[quote name='Clak']
edit- Oh and the first PC game I ever bought, Doom2. I still remember how all the cheat codes started with ID for ID Software, like IDDQD was one of them I know. I've still got it around here somewhere. Also remember playing Quake for the first time and thinking how awesome it was, I played the demo over and over again before finally buying it.[/QUOTE]

idspispopd! First time I went online was around 1996, because my city had a free isp. It was text based, because winsock kept crashing on our computer for browsers. I used a terminal program called Comet that came with the 33.6kbps modem that I upgraded to, from a 9600.

Before that, I had already played Doom, Doom 2, Wolf3D, SimCity/2000... For one of my birthdays, I asked for (and got) a 4MB RAM chip to double the amount of ran I had... And it was $39.99.
 
well not really the internet... but owned a 300 baud modem...

that's 30 characters per second... so slow typing speed.... you would read a line and wait till the next line filled up to start reading again...


as for the internet... well I used bitnet which was just a few years before the internet took off... before the advertisements and online e-sales and websites... and I used it for MUDs... you know those things that SOE ripped off and added graphics to and called everquest.
 
Terrible with dates.

First Memory of the Internet... "Welcome. You've Got Mail"

I remember it taking forever to load up pictures via AOL (started on 14.4 kb modem). I also remember getting dropped from people picking up the phone. The only thing I did online as a kid was hang out in the chatrooms. Though at that time I didn't spend that much time on the internet. Boy have times changed.
 
My first computer was in 1998 while I was in college. It was an HP Pavilion.

We had dial up until 2005 when our area finally got DSL.

I remember in 2000 or so wishing I would have played Ultima Online, but my computer couldn't handle it.
 
AOL 3.0, 28.8 modem, N64, South Park, Star Wars, WWF, somewhere around 1996ish. I had used computers at home and at school since pre-school, but I don't recall going online until around 1996.
 
Not internet but an apple II. Playing reading rabbit and some sort of castle game that was fcking impossible. Then first internet memory would be an early aol version on a black IBM. Windows 95. Finding "out there" Dragon Ball Z pictures, AIM and aim chatrooms.
 
porn and carpal tunnel . truthfully i remember when the internet was fun people talking chatting and just enjoying it all. alot of the sites were free to enjoy and i remember there bing alot of places where chicks would put on webcam shows and do all sorts of naughty freaky. then a year or so later they all went paid and people on the net became assholes.

thinking back on it alot of people had no idea how freaky their wives/moms were when they were alone at home.
 
I got the internet when my parents bought a Packard Bell PC in '98 or so. It had a 120 mhz Pentium CPU with 16 MB of RAM, along with a fat 1GB hard drive. I played Quake online deathmatch with my friends on heat.net.

When I wasn't doing that, I was chatting on chatropolis.com and looking at gross stuff on torture.net. I thought Yahoo's rocketmail was awesome, so I told my parents they should invest in Yahoo stock. If only they had listened to me!:bomb:
 
Middle of '97 or so, I bought a WebTV. I bought a computer about 2 years after that.
That was pretty much my first internet experience outside of playing Diablo at a buddies house.

I was downloading a 150MB file the other day and it took like just a couple of minutes. It got me to thinking back about downloading the Quake 3 demo. It weighed in at a hefty 100MB. It took 10 hours to download over my 56.6. Crazy!
 
[quote name='Mr Unoriginal']fucking Legend of the Red Dragon on a local BBS.[/QUOTE]

Hell fucking yes. I was the number one guy at a few of my local BBS's. Also, I think it was 93 when I first got online, got into a program in high school where you could build your own computer over the summer for free. My 386 was the bees' knees.
 
Playing checkers on excite.com around 1998, and going to Nintendo's website and Yahoo! chatrooms (on a Power Macintosh G3 all-in-one). Used Netscape back in the day, as well. I had just turned 11 around that time.
 
One thing I don't miss is dealing with all the jumpers associated with setting up a motherboard. Dip switches helped, but the cheaper boards usually didn't have them. The first board I got with software settings was wonderful.
 
Got our first computer in the very early 90s.. 90 or 91 and it was a Tandy.. and it ran on DOS. 2400 baud modem and I remember being excited anytime my brother upgraded the modem and he eventually did the 386 upgrade. Our 100mb hard drive was MASSIVE. Playing The Pit on BBSs and of course downloading Wolfenstein and Doom to a million 3.5 floppy disks. Figuring out how to use and abuse free AOL, Compuserve and Prodigy trials and then my brother running a dialing program to find local BBSs. Chat rooms on AOL were amazing.. hung out in "Punk" and "WWF" constantly. Fate X 3.0 by Magus and Fungii... and logging countless hours in the original GTA and building geocities websites. (I wish I would have been old enough to freelance website building back then when applets and frames were "advanced". Building a library of midi music that eventually turned into mp3s.

Great times... kind of a computer dork growing up but I run circles around most people nowadays because of it.
 
1996 and one of the first sites I remember checking was "Jimmy Vans Wrestling Wire" it was the first dirt sheet I ever really read.
 
I remember GNN (Global Network Navigator). It was a really cool service but then it was sold to AOL and it turned into complete shit.

I remember getting screwed by AOL when I tried to cancel their service (a story repeated over and over again by many people).

I also remember when Amazon.com came on to the scene. In San Francisco, there were people handing out free $5 coupons to buy stuff on Amazon.

I also rememeber Reel.com selling the Titanic DVD at rock bottom prices and that's what made them famous.
 
1998. I would go to the library and talk to girls in chatrooms. I also remember having the email address Hercules. Like, just Hercules@hotmail(probably wasn't hotmail at the time) without spaces or numbers. In retrospect I probably should have talked to girls in real life instead. I also used to post tips and cheats on gamewinners.com.
 
My first memories of the Internet are with using Windows 3.1, Trumpet WinSock, and Netscape Navigator. Was sometime in '96. Upgraded to Windows 95 shortly after.

To be honest, I don't remember what I did on the Internet early on... other than video game searches using Alta Vista and chatting on EFnet using mIRC. Around mid '97, I got into web development and started creating web pages for friends and myself.
 
I also remember the summer of 1998, Disneyland just opened the Innoventions attraction and they showcased two internet related things.

The first was an local Instant Messaging program where they had two computers and you couldn't see who was on the other side of the exhibit chatting with you.

The second thing was they had like 20 computers hooked up to the internet and it was a contest where the Disney employee told people to get to a certain page or search for something and you got points.

For the life of me I can't figure out why Disney/ABC still uses the go.com for all of their stuff (i.e. all of their main URLs redirect to subdomain.go.com).

Anyway I thought it was an interesting attempt of trying to expose people to what would become the dot-com boom.
 
Going on Gamefaqs for walkthroughs circa 1998-1999. It seemed pretty novel then, getting near-complete homebrew guides for free.
 
The earliest internet experience I can remember: in 8th grade, I wandered into a room with a single computer (I was supposed to be going to the restroom). The teacher's pet was in there and, for whatever reason, she decided to show me how to download music. First mp3 I ever downloaded? Ghetto Supastar.


[quote name='pitfallharry219']I can't remember too much about my first experiences online, but my first memories of learning about the internet come from the Max Mouse storyline on Ghostwriter. :lol:[/QUOTE]

One of the best episodes of a quality show.
 
And then taking the AOL disks out of magazines so you can keep using the free trial. Going on AOL and learning about 'cyber'. Then learning about 'phone'. Then a few years later learning about webcams.
 
the first thing I did when I grabbed the web broweser within AOL was go to dannisharddrive.com which was a softcore site where Julia Hayes did a bunch of stuff...
 
Also 1996, on AOL 3.0 and Windows 95... I don't remember my PC specs but I believe it was a Gateway. I spent most of my time in the kids section of AOL, and the Nickelodeon chat. I remember discovering "Progs" and using them to gradient my font in chats, punt people offline, etc.

I also remember running up a huge bill by playing games on AOL, they had a section where they charged a couple of dollars an hour to play games and I became addicted to their Starship Troopers game (it played a lot like Subspace.) Good times.

[quote name='pitfallharry219']I can't remember too much about my first experiences online, but my first memories of learning about the internet come from the Max Mouse storyline on Ghostwriter. :lol:[/QUOTE]

I remember that! I looked it up on YouTube and that whole story arc is available, I'm not ashamed to admit that I just watched it all. It's pretty hilarious, lots of antiquated computer lingo being used.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
AOL 3.0 on 14k dial up..I used to just go to chatrooms and bullshit ALOT. Remember the servers? AOLnerd send list/, AOLnerd send 1-700 or some shit like that. Also, TETRINET! Too much fun. Who can forget punters like Fate Zero, magenta and others.

[quote name='lokizz']porn and carpal tunnel . truthfully i remember when the internet was fun people talking chatting and just enjoying it all. alot of the sites were free to enjoy and i remember there bing alot of places where chicks would put on webcam shows and do all sorts of naughty freaky. then a year or so later they all went paid and people on the net became assholes.

thinking back on it alot of people had no idea how freaky their wives/moms were when they were alone at home.[/QUOTE]

A friend and I would have cyber sex with older women all the time. It was some really good stuff. I would've probably fapped if I was alone.. Anyways, at the end, we would reveal ourselves to be 14 and 15 year olds and just read the reactions. Alot of it made me cringe and it just felt awkward as hell but we just kept doing it to numerous women. Good times..?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
bread's done
Back
Top