Before the Web???

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Hi all,

Given that the WWW is so much part of our lives now, and just out of pure interest; I wondered what your own experiences of pre-web connectivity was?

For me the very first time I connected with anything or anyone outside of the local machine was when I got involved with Compunet on my C64. From there, it was staying up until midnight (circa 1987/1988) when calls were cheaper and getting on the Janet network to play MUD for a couple of hours and from there probably on my PC with BBS's (1991/2 maybe) before starting out trying to connect to the WWW via a dialer and the browser Mosaic around 1993/1994! Back then anything I tried to do on Mosaic was actually slower than doing something on one of my favourite BBS's - happy days lol :)

Of course all of this began via modem dial up - beginning with the C64 (1200 baud max maybe?) brick modem for Compunet! Loved Compunet though - it was like a club (a bit like here really lol)!

Cheers

John
 
We didn't even get dial-up until 2000. Before that, the only contact I had with any kind of computer networking was those CDs full of shareware games downloaded from BBSes :lol: That, and the occasional stop by the library where I'd find something of interest and then print it off...
 
I remember my next door neighbour having a 33.6k modem on his A1200 back in 1992 but didn't see it in use much. It was more like 1997 at college before I really saw it first hand more often and not until 2000 I got dial up at home (sitting up past 2am for the 0800 free dial up on x-stream to keep bills down now those were the days!). Then in 2001 I had the new-fangled Telewest broadband installed (it was amazing back then, so fast and a complete revolution for online gaming) and i've had that ever since.
 
My only experience with networks was the bbc at school and much later at home networking dos pcs together . I didn't get online until I bought my first modem in erm...1995 with uk online dial up £1 a minute for access and 60p per minute from bt for the call. But what speed... 1400 baud modem.

But before the Internet , I used to drive to the first computer centre in Leeds and buy share where CDs. I think doom,Hexen and heretic where on a white cd - £2.99 or something


Mud anyone and bt wire play?
 
Hey Mike - yeah I mentioned Mud in my original post. MUD was epic! The first ever MMORPG LOL. We (My friends and I on C64's) would dial into the Glasgow Uni exchange on the original JANET network to get local call rate (after midnight of course) and connect to the MUD service in Manchester hehe.

I might have my years out by one or two on my original post also (but maybe not!). The first "high speed" internet connection I had was when I installed ISDN at the house and got 2x 64k lines (one for voice and one for data - or if I was feeling particularly rich I could bundle both lines to give me full 128kb data!). That was great at the time (probably between 1999 and 2001) but it was expensive.

J
 
Prestel on my BBC B.

Dave G :cool:
 
we usualy just dragged our dos systems to and from some ones house. we also had our hard disks that had a caddy so you could slide it in and out of the front of the pc. so you had a drive with your games on it and dos (naturally).
and we either took the hard disk to some ones house provided they had more than one pc. "not many of us had more than one but some of us had 2 and even 3!"
barring that we did direct dial up games.
kind of sucked as phone bills were pretty high by the end of a good session of doom.

and we had to call eachother up 1st and have a convo that went like this..
"fancy a game of doom?"
"sure let me go get ready"
"are you ready?"
"just a minuet i need to get the phone line extention cord.."
"ready now?"
"um.. let me find the splitter"
"ready now..?"
"call me back in 3 mins after i have this set up"
"ok"

(3 mins later)

"ok we good to go now?"
"i think so its all set up. Who is calling who?"
"i called you last time.."
"no you didnt"
"oh.. thought i did"
"no i called you"
"ok il call you then ready?"
"yes hang up and we are good to go"

(hang up the phone and tell doom to call the number, no connection)
(phone back)

"i just did it it didnt connect.."
"i know some one answerd the phone.. its ok now you call and we are good"
(do same again. and this time play for a few hours)
:thumbsup:
 
@ Davideo - !!! Forgot about that! I remember that service and using it sometimes (probably around 1988 when I was at an ITeC!)!

@ Shambles - I soooooo remember those conversations lol. I also remember having almost the same conversations when the guys would be on my LAN after bringing their PC's over and taking half an hour or so to make everything work lol!

john
 
I used to run a local BBS from my Amiga circa 1992 called Shaggy's Lair. It was running on a 14.4K modem if I remember correctly?

The BBS was setup using Cnet, and every time someone logged in they were forced to have a play on Wheel of Fortune to try and better my high score, which was faked :)

The good old days. They will never be bettered <sigh!>

Nothing better then being referred to as Sysop through chat :)
 
I'm sure I remember having a "link" to Shaggy's lair in my dial up! The main ones I used were Scottish and local (for the call charges) and if I remember correctly were "Blue Lagoon" and "Verities and Baulderdash" as being the main two hehe

Yeah - good days!

John
 
The BBS was pretty popular at the time. I only ran it from 8pm to 8am as it tied the house phone up.
Most users were local as we had our own telephone service (Kingston Communications) so a call was 5 pence for as long as it lasted. I had to sit and manually kick local users off after an hour, as they would hog the lines all night LOL
I did get users from out of town, but it was a long time back and its hard to think of usernames I might remember now.

Still miss those days. Met a lot of people back then and everybody had the same interests, it was proper camaraderie and everybody tried to help everybody.
Not like these days.

---------- Post added at 00:58 ---------- Previous post was at 00:55 ----------

Forgot to say we even had a local club meeting once a month were everyone into computers was welcome. People would bring their new gear to the meets and wow us all.
I remember seeing Doom running on a 486 DX266 and decided there and then I had to have one. That was the fall of Shaggy's Lair and a move for me to the PC.

Never been the same since :( I must be showing my age now LOL
 
ShadieB said:
I must be showing my age now LOL
Click to expand...

Aye - you and me both!

:)

I do know what you mean about the camaraderie and community spirit though. Difficult to capture these days - although this Amibay forum - for me at least comes close :)

John
 
Totally agree with you about Amibay, especially with members like Fitzsteve going out of his way to help others.
I only discovered Amibay a few months back and now check in nearly everyday to see whats new and being discussed. It has that community feel that is hard to find on internet forums these days :)
 
think my first experience of networking was modem-modem connection with friends to play risk. Then my school got dial-up internet in the library and i would go to school early every morning just to use the new service. Convinced my dad we needed internet and went with a local company called innotts that was ran by an couple from the conservatory in their bungalow! Then we got a letter from NTL offering the free dial-up service they used to offer. Spent a good few years on the dial-up playing games like Age of Empires over the msn gaming zone and praying that everyone's ping would be low enough to get everyone in and the game didn't drop. The day they announced broadband in our area we signed up for the 1 Mbps service on the spot :)
 
Last edited:
I forgot to mention the earlier said neighbour loaned me an A600 before I got my own Amiga for a while, and we had a massive 20 foot serial cable going from my upstairs bedroom window down to his sitting room through the windows (in the winter too it was f'n freezing). We used to play Knights of the Sky and some other link up games that I can't remember now until stupid o clock :)
 
oh..

and non computer related..

i used to own at millipeed and moon patroll on the 2600:thumbsup:
 
ShambleS1980 said:
oh..

and non computer related..

i used to own at millipeed and moon patroll on the 2600:thumbsup:
Click to expand...

i still do :P

along with 6 different versions of the 2600

2600 Jr / Woody 6 button / Vader / Coleco Gemini / Sear Video Arcade II & the Expansion Module for the Coleco Vision

(i am up to 150 carts as well, well 121 non-dupes)
 
I definitely remember my first modem.
I had watched Wargames and fell in love..
Took everything I had and drove over an hour to the place that had the VicModem (300 Baud) in stock. Got a few BBSs to dial into also...

Was hooked ever since, even with 22 columns and 300 baud. :-)

desiv
 
I think for a lot of us, it was at first with a modem, "Talking" to another computer user with the same computer, either a neighbour or friend. Then (here anyway) about '85-86, BBS's exploded and it seemed there were dozens around locally. A lot of us never bothered with subscription services, like compu-link, Gene and such, it was just way to much money for a teen to explain to his parents why so much. Once the '90's hit, our city library came on-line with Gopher, so with BBS's and such, there was a lot of local content- it just took over night to download anything- if the connection held! -lol.
The first "real" intranet i used was at SAIT in 91 and we sent papers and reports to our instructors. By '93 we were already getting AOL disks and by '95 we had "proper" dial-up service. ADSL hit about 98-99 and Cable shortly after. Not really much has changed since the first day's of "High-speed" just the speed has gotten a bit faster thats all.
 
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