Remember Your First Time On The Internet?

dgridley · 02-06-2009, 07:51 PM

I got my first real "computer", a Texas Instruments TI99-4a, then made the transition to a Commodore 64, Commodore 128, ans an Amiga 1000 before I got my first IBM clone, a 386DX33 that my brother and I pieced together from a dealer who operated out of a garage. I paid $3600 for it and used it to run a TurBoard BBS system from home.

I'm not sure of the year I first used the Internet, thinking it was late 1998 or so.. pretty sure my brother got involved first, then I followed not long after learning to build websites and, at one point, charged $50 an hour helping local antique dealers learn to list items on eBay. I once got a job working for a local ISP because I was good at doing online searches.

Here's an early TV report on the new phenomenon known as "the Internet".

YouTube - Early Internet discovery

**j10asen** · 02-06-2009, 09:46 PM

I bought my first computer in 1993. It was a macintosh performa 600. Don't ask me about speed but I think it was slow. I played with it for about 3 or 4 months when I bought a 14.4 modem. I had no idea what I was going to do with it but I bought it and the first thing I did was dial into to the public library to look at their catalog. I thought that was cool because I could do searches at home to make sure the book/cd was on the shelf versus driving in and looking. I then tried AOL with their 10 hours of free online service ,9 of those hours were spent watching them update my graphics!!!. That soon made me bored and I moved onto prodigy and then compuserve where it was free to go online but cost you money if you wanted to go anywhere, I hate spending money so I dropped that quickly, I did not like their email addresses either, instead of names they gave you number like 12345@prodigy.net geesh!!
I know there were others but I just can not recall them at all except there was a free email server that was kinda cool , no internet just email but I can not remeber the name. Then something calld eworld caught my attention. That again was 10 hours free and so much a minute after that. It was not internet but it was a huge domain like AOL. eworld exposed me to a new world of stuff like ftp sites that I could download fun stuff to try ,mostly hypercard applications for the mac but also lyrics and chords for songs I liked.
early in 1994 I heard about the internet and isp. My mac had only 4 meg of ram so I had to update to get 12 meg, that cost me $300.00!, I just can not imagine I spen that much but I did. I found a local provider and spen 3 hours one night with a guy on the phone trying to figure out how to connect to the internet. Once connected I spent hours on the computer and tried everything from news groups to ftp to chat and telnet a very oldway of communicating over the internet. Oh yeah when I first connected to the internet I used a client not a web browser that led me to getting netscape 1.0. Yes I used the 1st graphical web brower that was developed by some guys in the government , it had a differnt name back then (I forgot the name.). I also had a second phone line connected so my internet surfing would not interfere with normal phone service.I rarly discconected on my own accord the provider would shut me down during idle times. I leraned to used my email client to check mail every 5 minutes thus showing activity and that reduced my disconnects drastically. I used that mac until 1996 when I bought a motorola Mac clone, yes they made mac clones at one time. I also bought a fast 33.6 modem and used that until 1998 when I bought a Macintosh G3 with an internal 56.6 modem. During those years I changed isp accounts frequently in attempts to save money. I moved from a 4 bedroom cape cod to a 2 bedroom upper in an appartment building where I was the only english speaking person. Out of work I returned to school. With my Mac and virual pc I learned some visual basic and I also learned that I needed a pc. I bought my 1st pc online without an operating system for $400.00 plus whatever a monitor cost at the time ,it was a huge 17" moitor. A friend helped me install windows 95(he gave me a copy) on my pc and other warez. That was my introduction to real computers and free software. That pc helped me get through school, I used it for everything including connecting with a mainframe in Madison and writting cobol (I HATE COBOL!!!),and it hated me, programs and connecting to a as400 for SQL. Somewhere in the fall of 1999 or spring of 2000 someone at school told me about an awsome client that was called napster. I was lost in a world of FREE MUSIC and loved every second of it. I also knew by now that the internet was constantly changing and nothing online lasts for very long. Some where in that time frame a computer virus spread across the internet like wild fire, the name "I Love You". I lost all my mp3's with that virus and from that time on I never used a pop email account again, I only use web based email like yahoo. I was also using free online services from wal-mart and others.
Are you bored yet? I am. The newness of the internet has slowly erroded and I am not so much online like was in the early days. I would say that during those early days up until 2001 I might have watched 10 hours a television a year.
In 2000 I built my first computer and enjoyed that. I have built a few others since but I am still using the same case. Oh Yeah that mac G3 , since I used a PC the mac stood idle untill I thought oit would be cool to make it into a music computer. I filled it with music and found that it did not sound as good as the PC did with a sound blaster card. So that mac still sits on my desk idle since 2002. I just can seem to part with that hunk of junk that cost $1700.00 smackers!!!!! Thats what I remeber from when I first got on the internet.
good night if you have not fallen asleep from boredom by now.

dgridley · 02-06-2009, 10:23 PM

Wow, John.. great response..

I loved the early Macs and always wanted one but they were too pricey for me when they first came out.. since then I've owned several of the first Macs that I picked up for less than $5 at various times (just threw a working one out now long ago to save closet space!)!

You seem to have a much better memory than I .. I seem to only vaguely recall my brother showing me the internet one day and really have no idea when that was exactly.

I recall Prodigy because at the time, I was beta testing BBS software that used a graphical interface just like Prodigy's. In fact, I was the one who suggested that to the developer. The developer kindly mentioned my name in the old Boardwatch magazine when he was interviewed regarding his TurBoard bbs. I ran a TurBoard bbs from home for a couple years.. in those days, if you were a SysOp, you got a lot of girls

Kens Digital Media · 02-06-2009, 11:50 PM

I toyed around with those Tandy TRS-80 computers back in the 80's, oops I mean '80s

I found a TRS-80 last summer at a garage sale and took it home. When Sony came out with the WebTV I thought why not and got one. I also remember getting a 400MHz computer from Best Buy for around $1200.00, that was a bargin back then. I've had other computers sense then, I should start selling them, have around 8 or so computers sitting around. Now have a computer I built. Not the fastest but it gets the job done. AMD Athlon X2 2.2GHz, 2 gigs of memory. Hey I can still play Crysis

I became a webmaster around 1998-99 or so. Remember when domain names were no less than something like $35.00 a year.