Before the Web???

[bitcpy]

I started connecting online with my C64 and my 300 baud PocketModem.

After the first time connecting to an online BBS I was hooked. My parents could never use the house phone again after 7pm...

I was using the "Internet" when it was called Arpanet (I guess that ages me easily). Being part of the cracking scene back then, I frequented all the popular BBSs of the day and spent alot of time on Unix and Vax machines just "looking around".

In those days it was pretty hard to "visit" a computer connected in another part of the world without paying heavily for phone charges. You had to get really creative if you wanted to visit a "cool" BBS that someone discovered in Germany let's say. I remember spending hours searching through all the Unix machines we could find looking for outbound dialers so we could hop to another computer somewhere else in the world.

Something that is so trivial today took alot of effort back then. But, it was so rewarding to accomplish.

I remember the day when one of our group members got a job helping out with the network at a local university. It didn't take long before we had our own computer installed on the network so we had complete access to the computer and a free gateway to wherever we wanted.

The C64 and that little 300 baud modem started it all for me. I eventually moved from the C64 to the Amiga 1000 and a Supra 2400 baud modem, and then to a Courier HST.

Do any of you guys remember those Courier HST modems? I remember spending hours upon hours fiddling with all the configuration values trying to squeeze every last BIT of download speed out of it.

Reading this thread has brought back a whole lot of memories.

Ahh.. those were definitely some good days!

 

[SaviorX]

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.

Al Gore invented the internet, don't you know that?

universities and researchers in the US, the UK, France and Canada had nothing to do with it...:shhh:

political/historical revisionism at its best (or lamest)

 

[desiv]

In those days it was pretty hard to "visit" a computer connected in another part of the world without paying heavily for phone charges.

Oh, you needed a blue box...
er.. um.. or so I'm told..
I mean, no actual experience.. with .. I mean.. um..

Now, when I went to college, my family had a C64 and I had an SX-64.
And I couldn't call my family using a blue box.. They would have known..

So I actually bought 2 Quantum Link accounts, one for me and one for my parents and we could e-mail back and forth as much as we wanted...
(Also got a free 1200 baud modem for each machine with QLink IIRC)

good times.. good times..

desiv

 

[SaviorX]

I started connecting online with my C64 and my 300 baud PocketModem.

After the first time connecting to an online BBS I was hooked. My parents could never use the house phone again after 7pm...

I was using the "Internet" when it was called Arpanet (I guess that ages me easily). Being part of the cracking scene back then, I frequented all the popular BBSs of the day and spent alot of time on Unix and Vax machines just "looking around".

In those days it was pretty hard to "visit" a computer connected in another part of the world without paying heavily for phone charges. You had to get really creative if you wanted to visit a "cool" BBS that someone discovered in Germany let's say. I remember spending hours searching through all the Unix machines we could find looking for outbound dialers so we could hop to another computer somewhere else in the world.

Something that is so trivial today took alot of effort back then. But, it was so rewarding to accomplish.

I remember the day when one of our group members got a job helping out with the network at a local university. It didn't take long before we had our own computer installed on the network so we had complete access to the computer and a free gateway to wherever we wanted.

The C64 and that little 300 baud modem started it all for me. I eventually moved from the C64 to the Amiga 1000 and a Supra 2400 baud modem, and then to a Courier HST.

Do any of you guys remember those Courier HST modems? I remember spending hours upon hours fiddling with all the configuration values trying to squeeze every last BIT of download speed out of it.

Reading this thread has brought back a whole lot of memories.

Ahh.. those were definitely some good days!

i briefly had a US Robotics Courier HST 2400/9600, would only work in 9600 when served by another Courier/HST, as i recall regular 9600/14.4k modems were the first to really come down quickly in price and i don't recall HST lasting too much longer.

replaced it with another (second hand) external 9600 for less than i paid for the Courier (also 'used')

i still have my original SupraModem 2400 external, as it sometimes proves useful for transferring programs and files between systems that i don't have other solutions for, so long as i have terminal progs for both...

 

[bitcpy]

hahahah... yeah.. I remember those! Captain Crunch used to travel in the same circles.

I never really got into it because we did all of our talking online so we just used the university computers to hop wherever we wanted... didn't really need a blue box.. whatever that is...

We had that Unix machine in the university for a few years before we had to take it down. Everyone who accessed it used to wonder how we could afford our own T1.. lol..

Oh, you needed a blue box...
er.. um.. or so I'm told..
I mean, no actual experience.. with .. I mean.. um..

Now, when I went to college, my family had a C64 and I had an SX-64.
And I couldn't call my family using a blue box.. They would have known..

So I actually bought 2 Quantum Link accounts, one for me and one for my parents and we could e-mail back and forth as much as we wanted...
(Also got a free 1200 baud modem for each machine with QLink IIRC)

good times.. good times..

desiv

---------- Post added at 23:04 ---------- Previous post was at 23:00 ----------

I quickly went through all the Courier models right to the very last 56k Courier HST.

I did have the original HST which only worked at high speed with another HST modem but then they released the Dual HST and from that point forward 14.4K baud worked with alot of other brands.

Now, we get 100MB/sec.. lol.. We were considered kings at 56Kb/sec back then.

i briefly had a US Robotics Courier HST 2400/9600, would only work in 9600 when served by another Courier/HST, as i recall regular 9600/14.4k modems were the first to really come down quickly in price and i don't recall HST lasting too much longer.

replaced it with another (second hand) external 9600 for less than i paid for the Courier (also 'used')

i still have my original SupraModem 2400 external, as it sometimes proves useful for transferring programs and files between systems that i don't have other solutions for, so long as i have terminal progs for both...

 

[SaviorX]

Shaw is offering 250Mb/s now, when we first got 'Wave' from them 14 years ago we were greatly impressed by the 1.0Mb/s they were offering, being that to that point you generally didn't even get 56k with your modem (a lot of the time the 'quality' of the phonelines would only allow a 53.5k connect)

hahahah... yeah.. I remember those! Captain Crunch used to travel in the same circles.

I never really got into it because we did all of our talking online so we just used the university computers to hop wherever we wanted... didn't really need a blue box.. whatever that is...

We had that Unix machine in the university for a few years before we had to take it down. Everyone who accessed it used to wonder how we could afford our own T1.. lol..

Oh, you needed a blue box...
er.. um.. or so I'm told..
I mean, no actual experience.. with .. I mean.. um..

Now, when I went to college, my family had a C64 and I had an SX-64.
And I couldn't call my family using a blue box.. They would have known..

So I actually bought 2 Quantum Link accounts, one for me and one for my parents and we could e-mail back and forth as much as we wanted...
(Also got a free 1200 baud modem for each machine with QLink IIRC)

good times.. good times..

desiv

---------- Post added at 23:04 ---------- Previous post was at 23:00 ----------

I quickly went through all the Courier models right to the very last 56k Courier HST.

I did have the original HST which only worked at high speed with another HST modem but then they released the Dual HST and from that point forward 14.4K baud worked with alot of other brands.

Now, we get 100MB/sec.. lol.. We were considered kings at 56Kb/sec back then.

i briefly had a US Robotics Courier HST 2400/9600, would only work in 9600 when served by another Courier/HST, as i recall regular 9600/14.4k modems were the first to really come down quickly in price and i don't recall HST lasting too much longer.

replaced it with another (second hand) external 9600 for less than i paid for the Courier (also 'used')

i still have my original SupraModem 2400 external, as it sometimes proves useful for transferring programs and files between systems that i don't have other solutions for, so long as i have terminal progs for both...

 

[bitcpy]

lol.. so the next time someone should complain about taking too long to download a 2GB ISO, tell them to break out the Courier HST and try it with that... It's a good way to earn some appreciation for today's technology.

Shaw is offering 250Mb/s now, when we first got 'Wave' from them 14 years ago we were greatly impressed by the 1.0Mb/s they were offering, being that to that point you generally didn't even get 56k with your modem (a lot of the time the 'quality' of the phonelines would only allow a 53.5k connect)

 

[ChrisUnionNJ]

Qlinker hear and bbsing on my 64 and on a Apple ][c..
300 on my 64 for about 2 months then found a 1200 baud on
sale at toys r us..
When I moved to amiga I used fidonet and called IBM bbs's that had
amiga areas I used a SupraModem 2400 plus that if I called a bbs that
had v.42bis I could connect at 4800 to 9600 baud..
And I still have all the modems I used on the amiga..



I could not post a pic of the third one which is a Sportster 14.4..

 

[Xanxi]

In France, we had the Minitel, an old text-based national networking system that used dial-up and a cheap free terminal which was in almost any house and office.

Since the late 80's, it was possible to hook this device to an Amiga to download files. There were a lot of PD software servers, and some computing reviews had their server as well.

Besides that, i got a connection at home only in 1999 (cable, then DSL since 2001). My Amiga have been online since 1999 (either null-modem serial networking, ethernet or WiFi).

 

[Slayer]

I'm pretty much the same, my first modem was 1994, a 2400 baud, I started playing the SWMud. I'm still on there if you finger Slayer, I'm the new Emperor LOL I played that constanly till 2000. The modem also took me around the world several times to meet various ladies, but we won't go into that ;-)

I made one very drastic mistake however, I started calling overseas boards. I did this for many years and at times I was paying between $1,500 and $2,000 a month in phone bills. One particular timeframe I remember that lasted at least 6 months, I was literally working to pay my phone bills. The only kick I ended up getting out of that was to say I could actually manage to pay those big bills and still live! I remember cutting everyone off from my downloaded warez because no one wanted to share costs. They didn't mind getting it free but called me various names for not sharing once I realised they were just a bunch of users.


Of course all the specials to call USA and UK etc etc didn't come until I had finished paying huge amount of dosh. When it did come in I had past that stage, and I think around this time the Web came our way.


As you see, I am still crazy, who else would buy 2 X1000s when people moan about the price of 1


I guess I've got a history of paying through the nose for Amiga stuff back in the day so today I really do think things ARE DIRT CHEAP.

 

[SaviorX]

meh, the only computer i have ever complained about the price of is (not)CommodoreUSA's abominations, double cost 'budget' PCs in custom cases...

with component upgrades which also cost (far) more than the component being upgraded...

(ie from a 320gb drive to a 1tb drive for $149 (which are about $79 locally/online), or in other words, we'll charge you $149 for a $79 drive AND keep the $49 320gb as well)

 

[Buzzfuzz]

Before the web I was usually hooked up by network or Parnet on the Amiga.

I didn't have my own line, but I could make use of a friend's dial-up 14K4.
Although BBS wasn't the primary source, it did make up for a lot of things.

The fastest way was just a bunch of floppies over the post.

Just around 1997 I got my own 56K line to the net.
That went to ADSL later, I did get that sort of green octopus looking Speedtouch thing and went for the highest possible connection.
Pretty soon I reached the 1Mbit mark and some of my friends were really jealous at the speed.
That went on till about 2006 when the word Docsis came around.
I went to cable internet, again highest speed possible.
Started out with like 20Mbit then 40, then 60 and now 120Mbit.

I think if I ever get my own place, which is very hard these days as single person, then I will probably get it down a notch, I don't need the speed as I download almost nothing, it's pure for speed in online gaming, but I don't have much time for that as well.

 

[mjnurney]

Do old style bbs still exist? I've never logged in to or used one. Would be nice to have a peek. I have the r net on my c64 and if I can get it to work ill try that. That would be give a similar experience I guess...

Due to the excessive cost of everything in the uk , modems and online activity was still rare until the late 90s. Having said that I do remember bbs adverts in c64 magazines.

For those that don't know , computer magazines where popular in the olden days , before the web.

 

[Vidunder]

I started connecting with a bbs in early 1993... but with a jacked C64 and a shoebox 300b dialup modem. Then I got so excited about this internet thingy that I bought a 386 and kept connecting through a dos (of course) telnet terminal called bananacom. Funky times, coz bbs were of course only local so we started knowing eachother in teleconferences and then going out to eat (no drinks, we were minors ).
Bad thing is that every minute went to the telephone bill - no flat rates at the time - and a few overzealous friends of ours got literally killed by their parents when they received telephone bills in the several thousands NOK figures :jester:

 

[Firthy2002]

You guys and your talk of BBSes...I definitely feel like I missed out!

My first real taste of the Internet was back around 1995 at high school.
Back then they were still using Acorns, and shared a 33.6K modem connection with around 100 computers! ISP was Demon, a big name back then (not really these days though!)
I even remember my first e-mail address. As you can imagine, it was very slow but pretty good for basic browsing. I even got a taste of Usenet.
Thanks to RISC OS 3's support for DOS disks, and CrossDOS being included with WB3.1, I ended up downloading some stuff for my Amiga.

Of course when school was out, so was Internet access. Pestering at home for our own connection didn't come to fruition.

Around 1998, the school made the switch to Wintel boxes, and a shiny new broadband connection.
Gone was my old Demon e-mail address, so I signed up to Yahoo, choosing Firthy2002 as my ID, which I have kept for everything since!

My Internet activity dramatically increased, as did my downloading for the Amiga. Squeezing things down to 720KB became a constant challenge!
With the rise of cybercafes I could even get online during school holidays, I spent rather a lot of pocket money doing just that!

Finally in 2001 my mum relented and got a PC from Tiny (we got ripped off) and dial-up with AOL, using a 56k modem.
At last I had a permanent connection to the Internet. We used it on a second line so I didn't need to worry about tying up the phone.
I think the best speed I managed was 53.5k but that was only on really good days, most of the time it was somewhere in the 40-50k range.

Eventually we moved to AOL's 512k ADSL service. We kept with AOL for years, never upgrading to a higher package voluntarily, our speed went up with package changes until we ended up with around 18mbps.
Unfortunately it was not very stable, and kept getting worse until around 2 years ago we made the switch to Sky BB. My connection speed is around 16.5mbps but it is rock solid.

 

[woodycool]

For me, I didn't get Internet access till about 98/99 ish time. Before then it was all PD libraries, CDs full of shareware and copying stuff off mate's hard drives.

I had an early P1 laptop (75Mhz, 16MB RAM and a nice big 1GB hard drive !!!) - I had Win95 OSR2 and 'Direct Cable Connection' setup, so I could make a network with two PCs over serial cable, I used to use this to copy stuff off my mates and then write it all to floppies (I had a LOT of floppy disks).

As for broadband, I was a late adopter, not getting my first broadband connection until 2007 which was on BT Broadband and was 8Mbps

 

[lostrego]

My first online experiences were around 1995 with an Amiga 1200 that I had back then, a guy that ran a dialup BBS lent me a 2400 baud Supra modem for a pair of weeks, I've got so adicted that shortly after purchased a second hand 14K4 baud modem.

I remember using first a bluewave client to manage mail and after the trapdoor + Spot solution for local echo areas and Fido ones too.

Those were fun times, thanks to that we had a nice amiga comunity on our city, also people involved with the demoscene (either amiga and pc).

The only ones that didnt saw this as funny were my parents when phonebills of about 150 € worth on 199something money arrived

 

[desiv]

Do old style bbs still exist?

Yep.
Almost always they are available via telnet nowadays.

From time to time, I use my serial-ethernet adapter and connect to BBSs today from my Amiga 1000.
Still use JRComm most of the time.. ;-)

Problem is now (same as then) finding BBSs that are still up...

They sell a C64 ethernet modem (rocketmodem or something like that??) also, although I haven't tried that (as my C64 is pining for the fiords).

desiv

 

[Merlin]

Ooh, BBS stuff... <nostalgic>

I used to access some of the BBS's such as LowLife, Ice Station Zebra and also tried my hand at Blueboxing, Roxboxing and attempting to use US 1-800 corporate lines to get dial tones to ring other BBS sites.

Those were the days, it was proper hackery back then. 14.4 or 28.8 modems and trying to get the best compression you could to get downloads faster. I remember MNP-5 being used a lot and this was before 56k or K56Flex modems came out.

US Robotics Sportster or Diamond Supra modems ruled the roost and you had to use terminal software. I remember spending hours trying to get NComm or JRComm working properly on my A600.

Happy times....

 

[User1301]

It's been cracking hearing about everyone's experiences - thanks folks.

What a long way we've come. From having to wait on it getting to midnight to dial up a BBS or compunet to keep the costs down to essentially having always on connection to the internet with faster throughput speeds than a lot of corporate networks used to have!

All over a period of roughly 20 or so years (and think also of the technology leap in general during that time). It's exciting to think what might be waiting on us in another 20 years from now



J