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The romance of the early internet
- Thread starter onadesertedisland
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Emperor Bohe
Member
Oh man...the memories. Everyone had a Geocities page. I wish I could still access my old pages. I remember spending hours looking at Mortal Kombat fake pictures.
Such as these:
http://tabmok99.mortalkombatonline.com/omega.html
http://tabmok99.mortalkombatonline.com/mknitro.html
I also remember spending hours on a encyclopedia that came installed with my family's Windows 95. Also...this always makes me smile:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miZHa7ZC6Z0
Such as these:
http://tabmok99.mortalkombatonline.com/omega.html
http://tabmok99.mortalkombatonline.com/mknitro.html
I also remember spending hours on a encyclopedia that came installed with my family's Windows 95. Also...this always makes me smile:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miZHa7ZC6Z0
butter_stick
Banned
The Windows 95 start up sounds like the future.
Dreams-Visions
Member
I remember running up a $100 phone bill playing in AOL chat rooms in the mid 90s.
a/s/l?
a/s/l?
K
kittens
Unconfirmed Member
Hah, that's pretty great. I love the Gameboy bit.Emperor Bohe said:
Our telephone line was shared with a neighbour and before 95 we barely had phone, she was talking all the time. Sweet revenge once we got dial up, plus the line wasn't digital so the cost was always that of one phone call.
And GetRight was the program to have back then with the line dropping at times.
And GetRight was the program to have back then with the line dropping at times.
Emperor Bohe
Member
omg.kittens said:
Yeah, if I remember correctly that site was originally on Boon's website which was www.noob.com
Out first ISP must have had some member directory you could browse as some chick my age emailed me through it one day.
I saw the name on the email and so I replied, "Hey Zelma, nice to meet you" and she told me that was her moms name.
I think the one time I saw her she was pretty cute, but still not sure how she found me since we both must have been 14 or 15 at the time (and therefore not the account owner nor in the directory).
I also remember debating search engines with a friend, he was big on metacrawler which I thought was garbage. Can't remember what I prefered, probably altavista or web crawler.
I saw the name on the email and so I replied, "Hey Zelma, nice to meet you" and she told me that was her moms name.
I think the one time I saw her she was pretty cute, but still not sure how she found me since we both must have been 14 or 15 at the time (and therefore not the account owner nor in the directory).
I also remember debating search engines with a friend, he was big on metacrawler which I thought was garbage. Can't remember what I prefered, probably altavista or web crawler.
SpacedCadette
Member
I was just thinking of MSN Chatrooms....Puddles said:
Puddles said:
Geocities chatrooms for me. I was 14-15 y/o and while my parents didn't really monitor anything I was browsing, I'd been instructed to never tell anything about myself in chatrooms. Likely it meant personal stuff like name, address and a photo, but I just ended up inventing different people to be, never mind age or gender. And that's probably what put me off cybering.
I remember the html chat rooms, kinda like a forum really, that auto updated. lol so much fun.
I think it was 92/93 when I discovered the internet. I'd never heard anything about it really before I wandered into my college computer room for the first time. I don't think kids today can understand that the idea of a World Wide Web was a foreign concept to most people. And no-one had emails. It was so weird the first time it clicked with me that I was getting a webpage from another University half way around the world, I'd spent half an hour trying to puzzle out what this thing was through a programme cryptically called Mosaic - it blew my mind.
Then IRC, html chat rooms, Gopher, Netscape and the 100 best websites page - anyone remember that?
Personal websites where all the rage, mostly filled with cat pictures and random crap - kinda like facebook now.
The 90's was the golden age of the internet. So cool, now it is just like electricity or water, a necessity, and not special anymore.
I think it was 92/93 when I discovered the internet. I'd never heard anything about it really before I wandered into my college computer room for the first time. I don't think kids today can understand that the idea of a World Wide Web was a foreign concept to most people. And no-one had emails. It was so weird the first time it clicked with me that I was getting a webpage from another University half way around the world, I'd spent half an hour trying to puzzle out what this thing was through a programme cryptically called Mosaic - it blew my mind.
Then IRC, html chat rooms, Gopher, Netscape and the 100 best websites page - anyone remember that?
Personal websites where all the rage, mostly filled with cat pictures and random crap - kinda like facebook now.
The 90's was the golden age of the internet. So cool, now it is just like electricity or water, a necessity, and not special anymore.
Boogie9IGN
Member
The Terrorist's Goldeneye Site was my favorite website as a kid, soooo good. And I was so proud when I got my name posted under the 100% on 00 Agent Quiz
I remember cruising webrings looking for Doom, Grand Theft Auto (the original) and Red Alert mods. Every single website had those "under construction" jpegs and a bunch of spinning skulls and pentagrams.
I remember spending all day to watch some guys videos where he had lego men die in horrible ways like getting hit by a meteor and getting run over by airplanes and stuff and thinking that was the most awesome thing ever. Now youtube kind of bores me.
I remember spending all day to watch some guys videos where he had lego men die in horrible ways like getting hit by a meteor and getting run over by airplanes and stuff and thinking that was the most awesome thing ever. Now youtube kind of bores me.
The real 1337 d00dz used Kazaa Lite K++. 100% share rate without sharing files.Complex Shadow said:
never forget. never again. my god the viruses.
I got an IRC group I'm a member of to start using this again late last year. Was a good laugh. There are still people out there who make avatars for it.Beardz said:
I miss the Midis.
Jill Sandwich
the turds of Optimus Prime
Eteric Rice
Member
InaudibleWhispa said:
You tell them it's a virus. Thats what I did to my parents.
This is how I learned the art of reformatting.
Also, anyone ever freak out on Windows 98 when you got the error, "WARNING: You have performed an illegal operation!"
I remember shutting that computer down and waiting innocently on the couch for the cops to arrive. Lol.
alphaNoid said:
This. My friends and I ran a small 2-line BBS with PCBoard, and man, were we proud of that thing. Good times, good times. Tradewars, anyone?
Back around my junior year in college, around 1994, one of my computer science (!) classes had us try and find links to any 5 sites dealing with a favorite topic, and since it was the pre-search engine days (even Yahoo wasn't around yet), it was pretty challenging. The same professor posed a question for a second assignment: "Imagine that there was some sort of visual WYSIWYG editor for creating websites. What would it look like and how might it work?"
Shortly after graduation a couple years later, I saw a billboard for a car -- I think it was a Nissan -- and it was the first ad I had seen that had a URL on it. I remember thinking that commercialization of the net had truly started, and it was all going to be downhill from there.
InaudibleWhispa
Member
WinMX!daviyoung said:
beelzebozo
Jealous Bastard
i agree. pornography featuring grandmothers used to be really hard to track down. now it's too easy. there's no adventure. i just click the werther's original icon on my desktop and there it is.
Always-honest
Banned
I got online somewhere mid 90ies and remember getting really hooked on chatrooms.
There was this one chatsite called Webnautics where me and my best friend would constantly hang out talking to people from all over the world. Since the net was still a somewhat new experience most people were still very open and genuine and you'd constantly meet very intersting individuals.
I remember me and my buddy becoming true aces at chatting up women to the point where I could get them to share their most intimate secrets after just a few days and got many invitations to meet up irl which I sadly ( or maybe luckily ) never did.
Fast forward to today and I don't think I could stand 5 minutes in a chatroom or even be bothered to reach out to some other person online
There was this one chatsite called Webnautics where me and my best friend would constantly hang out talking to people from all over the world. Since the net was still a somewhat new experience most people were still very open and genuine and you'd constantly meet very intersting individuals.
I remember me and my buddy becoming true aces at chatting up women to the point where I could get them to share their most intimate secrets after just a few days and got many invitations to meet up irl which I sadly ( or maybe luckily ) never did.
Fast forward to today and I don't think I could stand 5 minutes in a chatroom or even be bothered to reach out to some other person online
Starwolf_UK
Member
Free as in free subscriptions or 0800 number. I remember the latter might have existed for a short time. It would take you ages to get connected (as literilly everyone would try regardless of it they wanted to use it or not...) and then you might get cut-off after 30 minutes if you're lucky.blizeH said:
Otherwise even paid ISPs had disconnections (I think it was to avoid you racking a huge phone bill by accidently forgetting to disconnect) BT internet was disconnect 2 hours. Then it became 4 hours. Ah having to queue up videos from IGN using a download manager and leaving the computer on overnight round E3 time (thank goodness I found how to silence the modem...) while now we can just stream them. My 2002 self would be like "you've GOT to save them" while now its like "eh, it'll be there next time...".
Ahh....28k, I think the connection at our house was timed for an hr so me and my sister would time each other so it was split evenly, spent most of my time looking at cars. It was so slow but I was amazed. My sister also managed to stick a cd into the floppy disk drive, I still don't know how she thought that was right
It's incredible when you think about it, today I just got a new modem so I can connect to a 100Mbs service and I'm so lazy that I can't even be bothered to set it up
It's incredible when you think about it, today I just got a new modem so I can connect to a 100Mbs service and I'm so lazy that I can't even be bothered to set it up
Good
-Kazaa or Morpheus (I don't remember which one I used to get music)
-Netscape
-Geocites/Angelfire (provider of more music downlaods/anime wallpaper)
-When you downloaded a song, it didn't give you a virus later
-Netzero was my first email account provider
-Roberts Anime Corner Store (back when it was a niche store with tiny ads)
-AnimeonDVD.com (little later but they were great back in 200-2003 when anime was still "good")
-Lack of memes and gross websites readily available
Bad
-Dial-up (couldn't research on the net for homework and have mom talk to my aunt at the same time)
-Waiting 20 min. to download a 3 min. Weird Al song or worse not enough seeds so I had wait 1 hr at 98% completion
-Ugly interface or cluttered webpages
-Kazaa or Morpheus (I don't remember which one I used to get music)
-Netscape
-Geocites/Angelfire (provider of more music downlaods/anime wallpaper)
-When you downloaded a song, it didn't give you a virus later
-Netzero was my first email account provider
-Roberts Anime Corner Store (back when it was a niche store with tiny ads)
-AnimeonDVD.com (little later but they were great back in 200-2003 when anime was still "good")
-Lack of memes and gross websites readily available
Bad
-Dial-up (couldn't research on the net for homework and have mom talk to my aunt at the same time)
-Waiting 20 min. to download a 3 min. Weird Al song or worse not enough seeds so I had wait 1 hr at 98% completion
-Ugly interface or cluttered webpages
sixteen-bit
Member
I recall going on the Digimon page back when they were just spinoffs of Tamagotchis instead of Pokemon knockoffs.
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