The internet as it was in 1996

Zapatta · Apr 8, 2019

AladainAF said:
I ran a very popular BBS here in Austin that was also featured in the Austin Chronicle in 1994 or so. I still have that paper somewhere. I ran VBBS under OS/2 with a digiboard.

That shit was great. I was also one of the first BBSes in the area to offer internet email addresses with mail that you could get to your BBS inbox. I had a lot of custom ANSI art menus and shit, but sadly it's all sitting on QIC80 tapes that, while still likely good, I'm simply unable to read due to lack of hardware. Even had an old school ripterm call in number.

I used to leave my modem speaker on when handshaking all the time, so even when i slept i could hear people call in. Man that was a great time in my life.

The internet fucked it all up. And I remember my first ever experience with it was ftping to.. uhhh.. wustel.edu or somethign like that. Some big file archive. And I remember there were gigs and gigs of things available and I knew right then that it was over for me.

I was big into BBSs back in mid 80s when the only way to find them was by getting a referral from someone already in, had to use fake or cheap calling cards because free off peak long distance wasnt a thing yet in telcom packages. A friend got my into a local one that was pretty decent, the SysOp had real time chat when you were logged in which was new newfangled and fancy at the time. I got to 'know' them pretty well. A buncha users decided to do a 'meet up', and let's just say it was mentally shocking enough that I will never ever come to a FoH meet up ever, be happy that my imaginary versions of you all I have in my head are way cooler than you are in RL, and be flattered.

I never logged into that board again after that day, was too fucking depressing.

Vanessa · Apr 8, 2019

Zapatta said:
A buncha users decided to do a 'meet up', and let's just say it was mentally shocking enough that I will never ever come to a FoH meet up ever, be happy that my imaginary versions of you all I have in my head are way cooler than you are in RL, and be flattered.

I never logged into that board again after that day, was too fucking depressing.

1990s sausage party scarred Zapatta for life.

This is a great story though, give us more deets on this tragedy.

Kais · Apr 8, 2019

Lanx said:
lulz did you forget for a 3year period websites were all shit, cuz everyone discovered macromedia flash in 2000?

Every day i'm buffering.....

Bandwagon · Apr 8, 2019

I'm in my mid 30s, so we were just starting to get computers & internet in the school library when I was in High School. We thought that we were masterminds when we could "bypass" the content filter by searching for stuff like "breast self-exam" and see boobs. Then someone figured out that the filter worked by blocking certain URLs, but IP addresses still worked.

cmd
ping www.whitehouse.com

Bandwagon · Apr 8, 2019

I just realized that Whitehouse is the only porn site I remember from back then. It was all Kazaa/Napster otherwise.

Hoss · Apr 9, 2019

I remember the whitehouse.com kerfluffle. That was during the clinton regime, wasn't it? Don't click on it now, it will make you sad. I also remember www.mammaries because there was a country song about it, and hotmale because it came up a few times in tech support horror stories.

AladainAF · Apr 9, 2019

Kais said:
Every day i'm buffering.....
View attachment 202762

Oh fucking hell, I HATED that fucking shit. I loathed web sites that used fucking real audio. What in the FUCK was that abortion.

Powwow was an interesting chat program. I actually got some quality pussy from that chat program once. Some bitch was like 100 miles from me and came to go on a date and ended up getting cum blasted on her face.

pharmakos · Apr 9, 2019

Hoss said:
and hotmale because it came up a few times in tech support horror stories.

hotmial.com was even a porn site for awhile. not just fooling those that type the wrong word, but those that typo the right word. the internet was a dark, dark place back then.

Hoss · Apr 9, 2019

Was anyone else a fan of BOFH? We printed up every story, put it in a binder and labeled it "New Employee Orientation". The first page was a tutorial on reading email headers. Then the boss (who had no idea WTF it was) made the new guy read it. That new guy is still one of my best friends to this day.

Soygen · Apr 9, 2019

Zapatta said:
I was big into BBSs back in mid 80s when the only way to find them was by getting a referral from someone already in, had to use fake or cheap calling cards because free off peak long distance wasnt a thing yet in telcom packages. A friend got my into a local one that was pretty decent, the SysOp had real time chat when you were logged in which was new newfangled and fancy at the time. I got to 'know' them pretty well. A buncha users decided to do a 'meet up', and let's just say it was mentally shocking enough that I will never ever come to a FoH meet up ever, be happy that my imaginary versions of you all I have in my head are way cooler than you are in RL, and be flattered.

I never logged into that board again after that day, was too fucking depressing.

I'm way cooler in real life, though!

khorum · Apr 9, 2019

Vanessa said:
TFW you're a bard in the year 2000 on dial up kiting mobs and going LD only to find your character naked at your bind spot on the character select screen upon logging back in.

View attachment 202524

Of course you played a bard.

Vanessa · Apr 9, 2019

khorum said:
Of course you played a bard.

Cuz bards are teh ghey? Well bard was my first character ever due to me being a "bard IRL" (musician) but I wasn't really good at them so I subbed a cle and fell in love and have been a cle ever since.

iannis · Apr 9, 2019

Mist said:
I still had very sporadic internet access still in 1996, basically whatever free trials I could sign up for and whenever I could get the phone line free. I did teach myself game file editing/hex editing so I could make modded Command and Conquer levels/mod unit stats for the original game. I taught myself Visual Basic and C++ with whatever access I could get from home, or used the library at school. I remember saving up a bunch of money to buy Visual Studio 97(? wait maybe it was just VB5 and I got VS97 later?), and my first attempt at self-employment in IT came from redoing a local business's inventory system in Visual Basic which was a step up from the old ass spreadsheets they were using, but the end product still kinda sucked and I wasn't very proud of it and I got really discouraged for some weird reason.

It wasn't until towards the middle of 1998 that I had full-time dialup access and I could finally play UO.

I couldn't play UO. This was back when computers came in 33/66 and they had a TURBO BUTTON. A turbo button. lol.

My hardware was just too trash for UO. It would load. Almost. But it was unplayable. I think I had like 1 entire meg of ram, too. So I was like "drop 600 bucks on new parts, or just play muds?"

By the time I upgraded my shit EQ had just come out. I remember when I bought 2 4 meg sticks and felt like it was probably uncessecary.

The only really bad part is that whenever it rained, I'd lag. And then the transition to DSL was very slow. I stayed on 56.6 for a year or two after it was already slow.

iannis · Apr 9, 2019

Vanessa said:
Cuz bards are teh ghey? Well bard was my first character ever due to me being a "bard IRL" (musician) but I wasn't really good at them so I subbed a cle and fell in love and have been a cle ever since.

We called all of our Bards "Big Gay"

But it was just a superior class to enchanter if you were willing to cripple yourself for the glory of uber. Our really good bards all burned out pretty fast. The playstyle was just too punishing.

khorum · Apr 9, 2019

66mhz in 97? nah man that was already pentium pro/II era. The klamath die came out in 97 for cheap as the first Celeron and you could turbo it to 233mhz. Was fucking HUGE!

iannis · Apr 9, 2019

Yeah, you had to have a pentium for UO. I don't even remember the manufacturer of the CPU but I was using old crap, obviously!

And they were pushing a new pentium every six months. It wasn't JUST me being poor... I was thinking that the spurt would level off and if I waited a year I wouldn't have to go through the intermediary steps.

That growth spurt lasted 15 damn years.

khorum · Apr 9, 2019

Back then I only used my PC for gaming although I was entirely in software during that time... I was still doing old amiga m68k stuff and evangelizing for PowerPC/ARM risc platforms. Was a fucking golden age for sure. We worked on some BSD stuff on the old "blinkenlights" BeBox and BeOS. Still the funnest os I've ever worked with.

Jackie Treehorn · Apr 9, 2019

Bandwagon said:
I'm setting the intro song as my ringtone

Siliconemelons · Apr 10, 2019

Had grocities - played legend of the red dragon on a local bbs.

Ahh the good ol days

DrFukasaka · Apr 10, 2019

I was 26-29 and AOL was like Tinder on crack. I would just start up messages to every single woman in my area and manage to sleep with 5 or so new women a week. The internet was the great equalizer one night I hooked up with a 45 year old house wife with only one boob and the next night an 18 year old goth chick with a nose ring and pink hair.

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