What do you guys remember about 90s Internet?

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zerosoma

zerosoma

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I was thinking back to when I was in high school and we were allowed to surf the web while we were in study hall, etc. there was a website we all played games on, it was candystand.com - it was by lifesavers or nabisco or something. And then there was foggy's funnies where we watched a lot of inappropriate cartoons haha.

I remember dial up watching the dots go from the yellow phone to the computer forever. And Netscape navigatior, IE 4.0, America on-line, windows 95 sounds etc. EBay was pretty new then too. Most auctions had text and no pics. If they did there was a green camera icon next to the title!

Oh yeah chat rooms were the rage too. I went to Ice Cube chat a lot.

I'm getting all nostalgic here. How about you?
 
I was in college and we had text email which we had to telnet into. We had to do our own carriage returns and the accepted rule was to do it at 65 characters in case someone was on a narrower screen.

When I was a Junior/ Senior I had a photographer buddy who sent me attached JPGs and we just figured out POP email and attachments via Netscape. I liked the telnet in option though as I could access it anywhere. If one hit backspace they got a ^] or something, so they had to use delete.

One could chat cars on rec.autos.tech on usenet. I found a "Motor oil 101" by "Ed Hackett" that showed Exxon Superflo had more ash and a worse flash point. Also there was a "mini mopar" oil filter cutaway that showed Frams were cardboard junk and the STP from walmart was the bee's knees.

My computer had a primitive display driver that only showed 256 colors so everything was dithered. Except, somehow, Paint Shop Pro and the Opera web browser did 16 bits.
 
Blank and orange text 12" screen, AT&T Olivetti pizza box PC with tiny HD, MSDOS 5.??, pin printers with fanfold paper, DEC AltaVista, rec.audio newsgroups, VisiCalc, lotus 1-2-3, VI editor (me likey).

IIRC I was in Bell Labs Microelectronics I.C and flip-chip MFG development.

Trippin - Maybe this is late 80's???
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: ARCOgraphite
Blank and orange text 12" screen, AT&T Olivetti pizza box PC with tiny HD, Dos 5.??, DEC AltaVista, newsgroups, VisiCalc, lotus 1-2-3, VI editor (me likey) IIRC I was in Bell Labs Microelectronics flip-chip MFG development.

Trippin - Maybe this is late 80's???


That's the late 80's
smile.gif


I had a Hewitt-Rand 8088 with a 20MB hard drive, Hercules graphics and 640K of RAM rockin' DOS 3 (then 5, 6.02, 6.22...etc) and WordPerfect, PC Tools, Lotus 123....etc LOL
smile.gif
 
All of the old AOL sound effects: you've got mail, the instant message chime, the buddy sign-in/sign-out door noises, etc.

Also, this:

EWorld_Main_Screen.png
 
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
IRC, playing Quake online...etc.


I wasted a lot of time playing that too! There was another game that I played a bunch too but the name of it escapes me right now. But it was a first person shooter time game online.
Then guys started getting faster internet and you would be killed before you even saw the guy because mine was slower!
 
Originally Posted By: morepwr
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
IRC, playing Quake online...etc.


I wasted a lot of time playing that too! There was another game that I played a bunch too but the name of it escapes me right now. But it was a first person shooter time game online.
Then guys started getting faster internet and you would be killed before you even saw the guy because mine was slower!


Duke Nukem? (sp?)
 
I remember the old "AOL 5.0" disks that would come in the mail to get you to subscribe to their dial-up service. They would often tout, "Get 500 hours FREE!"
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: morepwr
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
IRC, playing Quake online...etc.


I wasted a lot of time playing that too! There was another game that I played a bunch too but the name of it escapes me right now. But it was a first person shooter time game online.
Then guys started getting faster internet and you would be killed before you even saw the guy because mine was slower!


half life?
 
I remember in the mid-90's (1995) it would take HOURS just to get online the local provider was so over-loaded and if you did it was very slow. I gave up on the internet for a few yrs until we finally got DSL out here.
 
I kind of miss AOL, now that Firefox is buggy maybe I'll switch back!
grin.gif




Dial up baby!
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
Originally Posted By: morepwr
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
IRC, playing Quake online...etc.


I wasted a lot of time playing that too! There was another game that I played a bunch too but the name of it escapes me right now. But it was a first person shooter time game online.
Then guys started getting faster internet and you would be killed before you even saw the guy because mine was slower!


half life?



That's it!!! so many wasted evenings!
 
Originally Posted By: morepwr
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
IRC, playing Quake online...etc.


I wasted a lot of time playing that too! There was another game that I played a bunch too but the name of it escapes me right now. But it was a first person shooter time game online.
Then guys started getting faster internet and you would be killed before you even saw the guy because mine was slower!


Half life.
 
Originally Posted By: hattaresguy
I kind of miss AOL, now that Firefox is buggy maybe I'll switch back!
grin.gif




Dial up baby!


That high chime at 0:08 was like the sound of victory.

You knew you were golden. Until that sound? Suspense.
 
AOL sounds and open chat rooms. Chat on yahoo too. I remember being online a lot around the 96 olympics in Atlanta and chatting about them.

Auto pages and stock research were most enjoyable, even as a teen in the late 90's. I spent a lot of time configuring cars I wanted to buy.

We played marathon since we all had macs.
 
I remember when my dad first talked about this World Wide Web. I asked, "do you think Ford has a website?" He said they probably do. We dialed up on our 14.4k baud modem and I think www.ford.com was the first website I ever visited.

Before that, it was Prodigy in or around 1989 on a 9,600 baud modem. I remember playing this maze game where you turned left or right with the arrow keys and you had to get out of this big labrynth.

I think it was this:

http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/171
 
When my family got its first computer, we got a second land-line installed so we could go online without tying up the phone line. Now we have no land-line whatsoever with broadband internet and cell phones.

I remember AOL, chat rooms, instant messaging, floppy disks, those weird sounds the computer would make dialing up.

I remember downloading songs for free when it was still legal (and waiting at least half an hour to download just one 3 minute long song).

I remember when we first got broadband being excited to finally be able to use Youtube, which was impossible with dial up.
 
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