The internet as it was in 1996
- Thread starter Bandwagon
- Start date
Bandwagon
Kolohe
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pharmakos
soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
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Man, if we could get images to load realllll slowly line by line from the top, we could so much more effectively get people to fall for a Fedoring.
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AladainAF
Best Rabbit
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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.
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.
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Bubbles
2022 Asshat Award Winner
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I remember downloading Metallica mp3's. FUCK THEIR 8 MINUTE SONGS. Took like half an hour just for one song. I also was stealing my neighbors dial-up, so I could only be online in the middle of the night for an hour or so.
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Agent Newsreader and alt.binaries.music was the cat's ass! I'd start it down loading when I went to bed and when I got back from work the next day the parts were ready to put together in winrar.
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I can try with a little help from my Friends
I'lll get by with a little help from my friends
I'll get high with a little help from my friend
I'lll get by with a little help from my friends
I'll get high with a little help from my friend
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pharmakos
soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
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Yeah Metallica was one of the first MP3s I ever downloaded. I don't know if they realized their anti-file sharing campaign would backfire and get people to download them as a fuck you.
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pharmakos
soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
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In 1997, at the age of 10, my parents only allowed me to have an hour and a half of internet time a day, so as to not monopolize the phone line. I think maybe we were paying hourly rates to our ISP too? Despite this, I managed to be pretty active on a few forums, via the archiving feature of Internet Explorer. I would download all the posts for a day and read them once I was offline, formulating my replies then and posting them the next day when I'd get back on. I was even a moderator for one of them, the forums at CMGSCCC.com, an independent website dedicated to Game Shark / Game Genie hacking. That site ended up getting bought out by the Code Breaker people, and was converted to being the main web presence for Code Breaker. Code Master, the guy that ran CMGSCCC, ended up getting gored by Code Breaker I think.
After that particular obsession, I ended up in 1998/1999 getting into WWF wrestling, and joined a few EZBoard e-federations, roleplaying websites dedicated to fantasy wrestling. Bookers set up matches for players, who wrote pre-match speeches for their characters. Whoever wrote the best speech before the match won the match. All done via text. Basically the gayest form of creative writing ever invented.
Then in 1999 EverQuest came out, and my new obsession was formed. I spent most of my 1.5 hours of internet time researching the game, and the other 22.5 hours of the day trying to convince them that paying $15 a month for a game you already bought wasn't a rip-off. They finally caved Christmas of that year. I was grounded for some reason, tho, and wasn't able to start my first EQ account til January 6th, 2000 (you used to be able to look up the date on their website, but no more since DBG acquired them.)
My EverQuest addiction ended up being what caused me to convince my parents to get a second phone line so I could play more than 1.5 hours a day. I explained to them that 1.5 hours simply wasn't long enough in a game where you often didn't even get your group started for an hour. They somehow budged and obliged!
Then my sister convinced them to let her have her own phone in her bedroom hooked up to the second phone line. She used the added privacy to be sneaky and stay in touch with shady older boys, leading to her abortion in 2001.
TL;Dr my EQ addiction led to my sister's abortion, and I should have stuck to gay sports entertainment creative writing roleplay.
After that particular obsession, I ended up in 1998/1999 getting into WWF wrestling, and joined a few EZBoard e-federations, roleplaying websites dedicated to fantasy wrestling. Bookers set up matches for players, who wrote pre-match speeches for their characters. Whoever wrote the best speech before the match won the match. All done via text. Basically the gayest form of creative writing ever invented.
Then in 1999 EverQuest came out, and my new obsession was formed. I spent most of my 1.5 hours of internet time researching the game, and the other 22.5 hours of the day trying to convince them that paying $15 a month for a game you already bought wasn't a rip-off. They finally caved Christmas of that year. I was grounded for some reason, tho, and wasn't able to start my first EQ account til January 6th, 2000 (you used to be able to look up the date on their website, but no more since DBG acquired them.)
My EverQuest addiction ended up being what caused me to convince my parents to get a second phone line so I could play more than 1.5 hours a day. I explained to them that 1.5 hours simply wasn't long enough in a game where you often didn't even get your group started for an hour. They somehow budged and obliged!
Then my sister convinced them to let her have her own phone in her bedroom hooked up to the second phone line. She used the added privacy to be sneaky and stay in touch with shady older boys, leading to her abortion in 2001.
TL;Dr my EQ addiction led to my sister's abortion, and I should have stuck to gay sports entertainment creative writing roleplay.
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Lanx
<Prior Amod>
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was it like ie5 or netscape4 that they finally figured out "oh you don't have to make ppl type in http://"
like jesus christ we had like 8 years of ppl saying
tvguy"and visit us on h-t-t-p- colon..."
tvgurl "WAIT BILL, whats a colon again?"
tvguy"you know those two dots, thats the colon"
tvgurl"OH!!! not the dot with the comma???"
tvguy"no, no,no..."
tvguy"anyway, don't forget to visit us on h-t-t-p-COLON-backslash"
tvgurl"WAIT BILL, whats a backslash...
like jesus christ we had like 8 years of ppl saying
tvguy"and visit us on h-t-t-p- colon..."
tvgurl "WAIT BILL, whats a colon again?"
tvguy"you know those two dots, thats the colon"
tvgurl"OH!!! not the dot with the comma???"
tvguy"no, no,no..."
tvguy"anyway, don't forget to visit us on h-t-t-p-COLON-backslash"
tvgurl"WAIT BILL, whats a backslash...
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Erronius
Macho Ma'am
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Erronius
Macho Ma'am
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I remember there being a limit on how many people could connect at a time (IIRC). It's been a long time so I could be wrong.
Had a roommate that set up a small BBS in the living room. I want to say that only one person could connect at a time. He'd also start downloading 'huge' porn files in an attempt to create an adult section. Right up until another small BBS in town got rekt for child porn, I think it was, and every piece of electronics they owned was confiscated.
The resulting panic on my roommates end was real.
LORD and Trade Wars for life
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Mist
Eeyore Enthusiast
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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.
It wasn't until towards the middle of 1998 that I had full-time dialup access and I could finally play UO.
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AladainAF
Best Rabbit
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It always bothers me, to this day, to hear these ads.
"Click blah blah dot com" or "On the world wide web go to..."
It's like bitch it's 2019, we know this shit already.
AladainAF
Best Rabbit
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My digiboard had an 8 line limit, but BBSes could only connect people based on number of lines you had. And yes, legend of the red dragon, good shit. I ran lots of door games. Great memories. As a sysop you used to always be able to just watch people do whatever they are doing lol.
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