Author Topic: Small talk: Getting online for the first time  (Read 1725 times)

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Offline AllThatJazzZ

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Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« on: July 25, 2021, 11:54:09 pm »
What was it like for you when you got online for the first time? Were you nervous? Was it dial-up? What device were you using? How long since you first got online? Do you wish you could take a time machine to an era when there was no internet and stay there? Tell us about your introduction to the World Wide Web.


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Offline rustynail

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #1 on: July 26, 2021, 12:00:59 am »
April 1998 14k dial up.

Offline Ghost Bear

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #2 on: July 26, 2021, 01:48:15 am »
If I remember right it was in February or March of 1988 when I first logged into CompuServe. I used our home phone line and the 300 baud modem built into one of these:



I was very nervous, but it was like a huge world suddenly became accessible. I don't think I would want to live without the Internet now. It just has too much to see and read.
« Last Edit: July 26, 2021, 03:48:34 am by Ghost Bear »
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Offline Elderberry

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #3 on: July 26, 2021, 02:28:22 am »
1982 pre-WWW. "English scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989". 300 baud modem that cradled the phone handset. I was using a VT100 Terminal that enabled me to utilize Archie, Gopher, Veronica and Jughead.



« Last Edit: July 26, 2021, 02:31:20 am by Elderberry »

Offline roamer_1

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #4 on: July 26, 2021, 04:56:19 am »
I started on a 386sx and thought myself a king when I upgraded to a 33.6 modem.

Nothing much at the time other than tech heavy dial-in boards.

I saw the whole thing bloom. And I caught the wave.

But never did graduate from forums to 'social media' proper. I prefer way more depth than 240 chars have to offer.

Offline AllThatJazzZ

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #5 on: July 26, 2021, 07:10:01 am »
If I remember right it was in February or March of 1988 when I first logged into CompuServe. I used our home phone line and the 300 baud modem built into one of these:



I was very nervous, but it was like a huge world suddenly became accessible. I don't think I would want to live without the Internet now. It just has too much to see and read.

@Ghost Bear

It's funny how quickly things become antiquated these days. That technology was spot on back when.

I was limited on funds but extremely curious about what this WWW thing was all about. The cheapest way I could get online in '98 was via WebTV. It was clunky and cumbersome, but I was finally online!

I remember discovering midi files and thinking that that was the bees knees. OMG! I was so green. I found a picture and article about my uncle who had survived WW2 only to lose his life shortly after in an accident. I was shocked when I discovered it. It told of some hits his ship took in WW2 and I was stunned that this WWW thing had so much info about my uncle!

It wasn't too long after that when I got a modem for my computer, and I was off to the races. There was a chatroom on Homestead that was frequented by several of us from FR. We had great conversations and great hilarity in there. Some of the people I used to chat with are still around. A small group of us are still friends and stay in touch via email these days.

I joined a few message boards and made friends and enemies over the years. Had some great fun smacking leftist around. I don't do social media. It's kinda creepy to me. I like being able to connect with people online, but there are times when I sincerely wish we could turn the clock back and wipe out the internet altogether. I believe it contributes to so many of our societal ills. But since I can't change that, I'll just enjoy the WWW ride in the safest lane possible.


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Offline AllThatJazzZ

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #6 on: July 26, 2021, 07:19:36 am »
1982 pre-WWW. "English scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989". 300 baud modem that cradled the phone handset. I was using a VT100 Terminal that enabled me to utilize Archie, Gopher, Veronica and Jughead.



@Elderberry

That pic reminded me of the Wang word processors. I never used one. Where I worked, we had the DECmates. It's so funny to think back to those days. We thought we'd arrived. No more typewriters! Mistakes were easily corrected. Could it get anymore advanced than this?!  :silly:

I still get a chuckle when I think of my friend who came over when I got my first computer. She didn't have any hands-on with the use of a mouse, so watching her try to coordinate the hand and the eye was LOL hilarious.


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Offline Elderberry

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #7 on: July 26, 2021, 12:17:25 pm »
I didn't use my VT100 much once I left school Dec 82. I started at NASA JSC Aug83 as an Integrator/Tester/CM. We had no access to computers at the office. All our work was done at JSC on teletypewriters. Although so slow and cumbersome, I loved the fact that it was so easy to verify the work done by a fellow integrator, as every keystroke was printed out. The next year secretaries got IBM PCs. I would work late so that I could get on their machines. As time went by, I heard that co-workers had home computers. I'd ask "what do you do with them?". I'd get answers like. "keep my recipes on them" or "reconcile my bank account". All stuff I could see done on paper just as well. It was only after we had our first child I picked up a used 386. I had to raise my son in the "Computer Age". Once I got online with a 1200 baud modem, I was hooked. To me it was all about "Access to Information". I started my son on simple "keybanger" game programs and he took off from there.

Offline Kamaji

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #8 on: July 26, 2021, 01:00:54 pm »
First, first time online?  1984 on a high school friend's father's NRL-based home terminal - ARPANET before it became the internet.  Then a few BBS, including one where one had to write an essay and apply for membership.

All on a pitifully slow dial-up.

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #9 on: July 26, 2021, 02:38:43 pm »
I started in the mid 80's.  Commodore C64, with a 300 baud modem.  I quickly went to a Hayes 1200.  I had to build the RS232 interface from scratch.  I found Gopher handy, and I had Q-Link to talk to my first "online community."  GEOS was the first GUI I ever saw, and when they got Macs at work I was already trained for GUIs.
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Offline Gefn

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #10 on: July 26, 2021, 02:44:57 pm »
I started on a 386sx and thought myself a king when I upgraded to a 33.6 modem.

Nothing much at the time other than tech heavy dial-in boards.

I saw the whole thing bloom. And I caught the wave.

But never did graduate from forums to 'social media' proper. I prefer way more depth than 240 chars have to offer.

Yep. First computer I owned was a 386 running windows 3.1

It had Prodigy pre installed. I went on a cat forum. I think it was 90? 91?
« Last Edit: July 26, 2021, 02:45:58 pm by Gefn »
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Offline Kamaji

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #11 on: July 26, 2021, 02:55:31 pm »
I started in the mid 80's.  Commodore C64, with a 300 baud modem.  I quickly went to a Hayes 1200.  I had to build the RS232 interface from scratch.  I found Gopher handy, and I had Q-Link to talk to my first "online community."  GEOS was the first GUI I ever saw, and when they got Macs at work I was already trained for GUIs.

I remember the 300baud modems.  My friend (same one who's father had the NRL terminal) had an Atari 1200XL that he would go online with using a 300baud modem.  The NRL terminal was capable of significantly higher baud rates.

Offline roamer_1

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #12 on: July 26, 2021, 03:07:29 pm »
Yep. First computer I owned was a 386 running windows 3.1

It had Prodigy pre installed. I went on a cat forum. I think it was 90? 91?

I got mine broken... Must have took me 6 months just to get it to boot proper and figger out DOS... Got to DeskMate (Radio Shack's DOS menu system)... When I finally found win3.11 onboard, it was quite a revelation.  :laugh:

Offline Elderberry

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #13 on: July 26, 2021, 03:08:19 pm »
Yep. First computer I owned was a 386 running windows 3.1

It had Prodigy pre installed. I went on a cat forum. I think it was 90? 91?

I stayed with Dos 6.2.2 for a long time before I stepped up to Win 3.1

Offline Weird Tolkienish Figure

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #14 on: July 26, 2021, 03:09:21 pm »
1995 first time I was online or heard of the internet. i was in college, was talking on Vax machines running VMS, they had terminals in all of the dorms. Later I used Windows for workgroups, did gopher, all that jazz. Those were funner days.

Offline roamer_1

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #15 on: July 26, 2021, 03:11:33 pm »
I stayed with Dos 6.2.2 for a long time before I stepped up to Win 3.1

I STILL have DOS 7.10 laying around...

Offline Restored

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #16 on: July 26, 2021, 03:20:59 pm »
1994. 1200 baud modem borrowed from work while home on "paternity leave". I started banging around the local BBS's to access FIDONet. Finally got internet for good.
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Offline AllThatJazzZ

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #17 on: July 26, 2021, 03:35:22 pm »
I didn't use my VT100 much once I left school Dec 82. I started at NASA JSC Aug83 as an Integrator/Tester/CM. We had no access to computers at the office. All our work was done at JSC on teletypewriters. Although so slow and cumbersome, I loved the fact that it was so easy to verify the work done by a fellow integrator, as every keystroke was printed out. The next year secretaries got IBM PCs. I would work late so that I could get on their machines. As time went by, I heard that co-workers had home computers. I'd ask "what do you do with them?". I'd get answers like. "keep my recipes on them" or "reconcile my bank account". All stuff I could see done on paper just as well. It was only after we had our first child I picked up a used 386. I had to raise my son in the "Computer Age". Once I got online with a 1200 baud modem, I was hooked. To me it was all about "Access to Information". I started my son on simple "keybanger" game programs and he took off from there.

@Elderberry

Mind if I ask what building you were working in at JSC during that time?


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Offline Elderberry

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #18 on: July 26, 2021, 04:33:39 pm »
@AllThatJazzZ

Bldg 30 Mission Control. I began with Ford Aerospace in the Integration/Test/Configuration Management (INTCM) Section, configuring and testing the Perkin Elmer Interdata 8/32 Telemetry Pre-Processors(TPCs) that were the front-end processors of the Downlink;  telemetry, shuttle and payload, and audio and Uplink; commands and audio for the Space Shuttle. I also performed similar work on the DAPS Pre-Processors for Spacelab. Both of those systems were on the 1st floor of Bldg30. And I continued, wearing several different Company hats, as the system evolved during the years. I finally left in 2014.
« Last Edit: July 26, 2021, 04:37:42 pm by Elderberry »

Offline AllThatJazzZ

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #19 on: July 27, 2021, 01:56:20 pm »
@AllThatJazzZ

Bldg 30 Mission Control. I began with Ford Aerospace in the Integration/Test/Configuration Management (INTCM) Section, configuring and testing the Perkin Elmer Interdata 8/32 Telemetry Pre-Processors(TPCs) that were the front-end processors of the Downlink;  telemetry, shuttle and payload, and audio and Uplink; commands and audio for the Space Shuttle. I also performed similar work on the DAPS Pre-Processors for Spacelab. Both of those systems were on the 1st floor of Bldg30. And I continued, wearing several different Company hats, as the system evolved during the years. I finally left in 2014.

@Elderberry

I was in Building 7 (Ham Standard-3rd floor) at that time, right across the campus from Building 30. It was so relaxing to stand at the window early in the morning with a cup of coffee and look across that beautiful campus, occasionally spotting a deer that had wandered in among the buildings. It was quiet (we worked from 7 to 4) and a nice way to start the day before the rest of the building (8 to 5) started bustling.

I started out in '66 in Building 2 which would later be renamed Building 1. From there I was assigned to Mission Planning and Analysis Division (3rd floor Building 30) until an interesting opening became available in Flight Support Division on the first floor. We had a nice view out the back of the building until the cafeteria was built. I was NASA then. Over the years, I ended up working for contractors (Lockheed, Martin-Marietta, Ham Standard) on-site and off-site, Clear Lake and Nassau Bay. I left the space biz shortly after (but not because of) the Challenger disaster. Seeing your posts cast my mind back to those years and caused me to get a little nostalgic. I would imagine at some point our paths crossed, though we'd have no way of knowing. The area looks so different now. That's progress, I guess. I'm not sure I'm that keen on it. You know how old people are.  wink777 
« Last Edit: July 27, 2021, 02:13:53 pm by AllThatJazzZ »


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Offline Elderberry

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #20 on: July 27, 2021, 03:22:43 pm »
When the fog rolled in, the deer were everywhere. I never knew when I stepped outside whether it was day or night. Once I stepped outside and the parking lot was full of people and there was a fire truck. I discovered a fire alarm had gone off. Of course, no fire alarms in Mission Control. The fire alarms only went off on the Admin side. You are expected to work on console until you drop dead, or are relieved. I was on call 24/7. And that was via damn pagers. No cell phone. Us Integrators were the first to be called whenever there was a problem. Not that we knew it all, but we had an overall knowledge of the system, so we knew which specialists needed to be called, or was it something we could fix ourselves. We typically built  a system for flight around once a week, there were so many revs. We were supposed to have 5 days for each build, but we did it 20 hrs straight and then finished up with the paperwork. We got used to always having problems just before launch, because, I think, the Flight Surgeons never supported the Sims. So they found their problems, just before launch. Just part of the job.

The early days were what I totally enjoyed. To me, there is nothing more boring than a successful test. There were tests where I opened a hundred discrepancy reports. Once all the problems were ironed out and things ran smoothly, it wasn't fun anymore.

Offline rustynail

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Offline PeteS in CA

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #22 on: July 27, 2021, 05:07:31 pm »
We didn't have a modem for our C64 or 386SX machines, but our 486SX machine had a 2.4K modem, and we started out with AOL. Prior to that the closest I came to the Internet was email on Tandem Computer's (not Tandy Corporation) internal network.

I've mostly used the Internet for news and discussion, plus occasional job-hunting. My first discussion forums are on the long-defunct Warships1.com (naval history) and Kaleidoscapes (homeschooling), in 1997. My first news/politics discussion forum was CapitolHillBlue's Reader Rant. I think that's still around (last I looked it looked kind of moribund), but somewhere in the very early 2000s flipped from conservative/libertarian to Prog & virulent anti-Christian.
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Offline Fishrrman

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #23 on: July 27, 2021, 10:06:39 pm »
My first computer was an Apple //c bought around December 1986.

To get online, I found a Panasonic 300bps "phone/modem" at... Crazy Eddie's.
This looked like an office desktop phone, but had an RS232 port on the back and a switch on the front to change from phone to computer input when the signal was received from the remote source. You had to dial the number, wait for the modem sounds, and "flip the switch" manually.

I had to buy the parts and build my own RS232c cable to connect to the //c (which didn't have a standard pc-type port on the back). Amazingly, it worked the very first time.

CompuServe was more than I wanted to pay (it was around $12 per hour), but there also was "GEnie" (the "poor man's CompuServe") @ $6 per hour.

No images back then @300bps, just message boards, etc.

Only 4-5 months later I got my first Mac, a Macintosh SE. Whole different world.
And a 1200bps modem, I thought it was flying!

Offline jmyrlefuller

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Re: Small talk: Getting online for the first time
« Reply #24 on: July 27, 2021, 11:01:17 pm »
My aunt had a computer with Internet right around the turn of the millennium and I used to browse a little bit on that, and I vaguely remember in the late 1990s a couple of times where we had Netscape on the Apple Macintosh computers at school (most of our computers there were Apple IIe and Atari ST), but I remember it being very disorienting and not really knowing what I wanted back then.

The Fuller clan got our first computer Christmas 2001. It was a used Windows 95 model and Netscape (and thus all that was affiliated with it at the time, i.e., CNN, Sports Illustrated, et al.) and the National Weather Service Web site were my usual stops at the time (I remember my first desktop wallpaper was the radar screen of a big lake-effect snowstorm); I later discovered Lycos and had some fun there. I launched my own site in 2003 (it's still running!); I didn't really start chatting online until going to college the next year. I remember a few e-mail chains, then we went to AIM and MSN Messengers, then to Facebook (I skipped right over Myspace). We were on a 33.6k dial-up modem until 2009!

This isn't really "online" related, but even back then, I had some weirdly creative fun. Our Win95 computer came with software called Kai's Power Goo. It wasn't particularly useful; all you did was just warp pictures out of shape, but we made quite a few "Warped Movies" with it that are now lost to time.
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