View Full Version : How long have you been.....'On the net ' ?
just wondering,
as its been ten years almost to the day for me now with my first, and still current email addy
i do have about nine others to go with it now as well, lol
MyPix:)
Far too long ! I remember the days of dos prompt and 14400 modems being fast ! lol
Been using the 'net since it appeared , had many email adresses as I moved between ISP's as they appeared/went bust.
Got fed up 6 years ago & registered my family name as a domain , www.familyname.org with email forwarding so I'll have the same email adress until I snuff it :)
About 11 years now. My first modem was a 2.4k baud modem on my Amiga.
Do you know I honestly can't remember, but I think it must be about 7 years or so. Got ourselves one of the original free, freeserve accounts, and since then have been through Wanadoo and now on to Orange. Are finally getting something back now to as having just returned to orange for my mobile phone they are now giving us the broadband for free! :D
cool,
i have also registered my own domain, and have email forwarding for 10 emails , but i still use my original freeserve email for the time being,
i started out with a Pentium 166mmx , with a 1.2 gig HD and 16meg of ram:suspect: , and that was the latest, fastest machine for at least 3 months , lol
b4 that i had a ZX Spectrum, Commador 64 and an Atari 1024ST ,
how things have changed,
MyPix
i started out with a Pentium 166mmx , with a 1.2 gig HD and 16meg of ram:suspect: , and that was the latest, fastest machine for at least 3 months , lol
My first PC was a 386 DX 40 with math co-processor 205 mb hdd cant remember how much ram it had though ! lol was running dos and windows 3.1 lol
About 11 years now. My first modem was a 2.4k baud modem on my Amiga.
ooohh, that was a posh one , I started out with 1200/75 :eek:
My first PC was a 386 DX 40 with math co-processor 205 mb hdd cant remember how much ram it had though ! lol was running dos and windows 3.1 lol
u sure it actually had ' RAM ' :wave: , lol
MyPix :lol:
u sure it actually had ' RAM ' :wave: , lol
MyPix :lol:
I think it did ! lol wasnt much though ! lol ram was extortionate back then as well !
i remember when ' MMX' chips came out , you hade to use ram in pairs,
just another way of getting more money from us,
i bought a pair of chips to upgrade from the 16 meg i had ( 2x8meg ) to 32 meg ( 2x16 ) , these cost me over £120
boy did it got faster, lmfao
MyPix
1994/5 on a homebuilt 386 25 with math co-pro. had a 286 before that and a 8086 Amstrad before that.
Trumpet winsock anyone?
Remember playing an early online dungeons an dragons type game using telnet - it was crude text only in any case.
been using the interwebnet for about 5 years now, was a geek way back with a 8086 amstrad, Dos 6 and all that, had a 32mb HDD! Also had an IBM machine that i got given, had a colour monitor!
Lost interest and moved away from PC's to consoles, then slowly came back when i realised what a great wealth of porn information there was on the internet
OMG! compared to you lot Im just a baby ;)
Been on the net about 2 years but, only had my own pc this last year (used to nick my son's).
must be :thinking: 6 years I think. Totally changed my life there is so much to learn and do.
Warspite
12-08-2006, 22:36
Somewhere between 13 and 14 years - remember it was just before Doom was released as a shareware, using MS-DOS and Windows 3.x - and websites have hardly any graphics in them, with exception of the odd logo, and everyone used newsgroups;)
Had an old ICL 80286 before that, never seemed that slow running Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS 6.2 - until I saw how much faster these ran on a 386SX 25MHz:'(
Can also remember when I upgraded it being a big deal having 8Mb RAM (72 pin SIMMs) in a 486SX running at 33MHz - allowed me to run Dark Forces, when it was finally released:)
Johnny1982
13-08-2006, 02:29
I remember when I started on the net. I had just started out with my lady at the time which lasted for 3 years. So around 1998
I used an internal pci dimond something modem connected on a 56k line that was capped in half due to old tele comunications hardware called a dacs. This technology split my line and I could only get 2.3kbs connection via a yahoo free newspaper CD. Then I went onto AOL (v6 - 7) At this time It was about late 1999.
2000 I was able to remove the dacs and have 56k.
Updated to ADSL when it was avialable on BT which I am still with now at 4 - 6mb (Never had a problem with BT regarding broadband. But they didnt wanna know when it came to removing a dacs!)
I started off on BBS's around 1992ish, moving onto the internet in 1995 at uni.
I remember I had my own Geocities website, when they were split up into areas.
Minw was www.geocities.com/sunsetstrip/1442 or something like that. Ahhhh those were the days.
Got the internet at home in 1997 with A*L. I was one of the Beta Testers for AOL 4 :D Which was cool.
Forbiddenbiker
13-08-2006, 09:04
I think its about 8 or 9 years for me, I remember being on full 56k for the first time....whay, what speed I thought.:lol: ...back when you where lucky to search two or three pages in an evening. ;)
I don't remember what my first pc was either, possibly a 286...I remember it had an incredibly fast 14 MHz speed... and I had no idea what to do with it. :D
namllihs
13-08-2006, 09:23
About 11 years, with my 2nd PC a pentium 75Mhz with 850Mb Hard diisk, 4Mb Ram, which was a huge improvement on my first PC an Amstrad PC2086.
Specifications
CPU 8Mhz 8086 Processor
RAM 640KB
Video Extended VGA adaptor that supports MDA, CGA, Hercules, EGA, MCGA, VGA, and enhanced VGA
I/O Ports Mouse Interface, 1x Parallel and 1x RS232 Serial
Expansion 3 full size 8 bit expansion slots
Sound Built in 'PC Speaker'
Drives 3.5" 720K Floppy Drive and 32MB RLL hard disk with hard disk model. Second internal 3.5" 720K floppy drive or external drive (5.25" 360K, 720K 3.5", or 1.44M 3.5")
Operating System MS-DOS 3.30
Microsoft Windows 2.1
Microsoft GW-BASIC
Since 1995 or 96 I think, I joined Compuserve on a 14k connection for £27? a month plus phone call costs. One early phone bill was over £400 :eek:
1st pc, Olivetti 386 sx16 with a 14" 640x480 vga monitor, 2mb ram, 40mb hard drive and 128k graphics memory.
I upgraded the memory to 4mb, the video memory to 256k, bought a clip on Cyrix processor to bring it up to a 386 dx40 (supposedly) all for stupidly large amounts of cash!
Hope this doesn't make everything too slow but I have a Simply Computers booklet from November 1996 when they were in a shed at clifford road walthamstow and it was a scrum to get up the stairs to the office to buy something :)
Some of the prices might make you think - check out the latest digital cameras!
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robertmpeacock/talkp/1/x-cpu.jpg
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robertmpeacock/talkp/1/xdigicams.jpg
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robertmpeacock/talkp/1/xhdd.jpg
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robertmpeacock/talkp/1/xmodems.jpg
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robertmpeacock/talkp/1/xprint.jpg
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robertmpeacock/talkp/1/xsimm.jpg
minimeeze
13-08-2006, 11:30
Oooh - I can't remember. It must be about 7 or 8 years :thinking: I'd be well and truly lost without it!
digitalfailure
13-08-2006, 11:36
i've been on it about an hour this morning :D
Warspite
13-08-2006, 13:42
TBH for the time they look quite reasonable - I think I should have used them more on reflection :thinking:
I've been on the 'net about eight years I suppose, but I only got into it seriously when I got my broadband connection about 6 years ago. Prior to that surfing was just too slow and painful.
ooohh, that was a posh one , I started out with 1200/75 :eek:
I can remember when I upgraded to 1200/75 from 300/300. I was accessing things like Prestel and similar pre-Berners-Lee. I was using online banking via Bank of Scotland in 83 or 84. I remember the claims of other banks saying they were the first with on-line banking in the (I think) the early nineties. I don't think the www came along until 94 ish.
erm, six years for me! :D too long I think,lol :lol:
Jewel
I was using Prestel back in the 80's in my Dads offices
My first computer was an Acorn Electron running at a speedy 2Mhz in 1983 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Electron
Arcadians & Chuckie Egg ruled my world
I've been on the www (as it is now) since the start.
Ahhh Chuckie Egg ruled... :D
Seeing that comment about Simply Computers being in a shed reminds me.
I remember when Dabs was in a pokey little shop at the end of my street. I used to go in and buy my floppy discs in there for school, and felt dead grown up saying "I'm paying cash so I don't want to pay VAT" :lol:
Warspite
13-08-2006, 21:13
I remember when Dabs was in a pokey little shop at the end of my street. I used to go in and buy my floppy discs in there for school, and felt dead grown up saying "I'm paying cash so I don't want to pay VAT" :lol:
How things change (http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2006/04/28/bt_dabs/) :eek:
whitewash
13-08-2006, 21:38
the first time i used the net would have been around 10-12 years ago, i remember one of my parents friends had his computer hooked up and was showing off, i cant for the life of me think what we actually look at.
i must have got the internet myself on my computer (for my birthday my dad finally bowed to pressure to replace the 386 and instead of buying a built computer he got a friend to buy the bits and taught me to put it together, bits of that computer are still in my dads pc!) that was in 1998..... and that was when i first got the internet, i used to spend my life playing grand prix legends on the internet, it was great!
ive had the internet pretty much uninterupted since, dont think i could live without it!
whitewash
13-08-2006, 21:42
My first PC was a 386 DX 40 with math co-processor 205 mb hdd cant remember how much ram it had though ! lol was running dos and windows 3.1 lol
i can beat that! 386mx40mx with a whopping 102mb hdd! it originally had 1mb if ram but we upped it to 4mb. it ran windows 3.1 when we first got it (to replace the greenscreen amstrad pcw) it was top of the range having shunned 5 1/4" for 3.5" floppys..... weeks later everyone was getting these cdrom things!
My first computer (if you discount games consoles, which was a ping pong thingy)...my first computer was a Toshiba MSX....
Boy did I love writing in BASIC on that.
And on saturday mornings, I'd catch teh train to Bury market with my pocket money and look through the game tapes :D
whitewash
13-08-2006, 22:21
every game i had on my dads amstrad PCW he had paintakingly copied the code from the back of magazines, i used to love playing postman!
its worrying that these things are less technologicially advanced than something 90% of us carry in our pockets!
I've been online since 1998, so, just over 8 years.
Me and computers go way back, though, starting with an Atari 2600 around 1981. I ruled at Pacman and [in]famously got through 8 hours of non-stop playing. Being 6 years old, I only stopped because it was bed time.
I also ruled at Real Sports Tennis - I never lost a single game.
Moved onto an Amstrad CPC464 in 1986, which is what first got me interested in programming.
Got a Commodore 64 a few years later and its own version of BASIC put me right off until I got an Amiga 500 in 1991 and a copy of AMOS. When AMOS Pro came along I wrote my first complete game which was published by Alternative Software.
Meanwhile I upgraded to an Amiga 1200, wrote more games - mostly Licenceware and Public Domain stuff, plus a self-published title which I did well to break even with, given that Commodore went bust, then Escom as well.
I started work in March 1998 as a PC games tester for Gremlin Interactive. An achievement, considering I'd never even used a PC before. Got online in 1998 and discovered there was a PC version of Blitz Basic a couple of years later, so got back into programming again.
Lucky I did. Those little games I write that take me a couple of months each have given me a five-figure return so far for very little outlay.
whitewash
13-08-2006, 22:38
I've been online since 1998, so, just over 8 years.
Me and computers go way back, though, starting with an Atari 2600 around 1981. I ruled at Pacman and [in]famously got through 8 hours of non-stop playing. Being 6 years old, I only stopped because it was bed time.
I also ruled at Real Sports Tennis - I never lost a single game.
Moved onto an Amstrad CPC464 in 1986, which is what first got me interested in programming.
Got a Commodore 64 a few years later and its own version of BASIC put me right off until I got an Amiga 500 in 1991 and a copy of AMOS. When AMOS Pro came along I wrote my first complete game which was published by Alternative Software.
Meanwhile I upgraded to an Amiga 1200, wrote more games - mostly Licenceware and Public Domain stuff, plus a self-published title which I did well to break even with, given that Commodore went bust, then Escom as well.
I started work in March 1998 as a PC games tester for Gremlin Interactive. An achievement, considering I'd never even used a PC before. Got online in 1998 and discovered there was a PC version of Blitz Basic a couple of years later, so got back into programming again.
Lucky I did. Those little games I write that take me a couple of months each have given me a five-figure return so far for very little outlay.
thats ace!
JonathanRyan
14-08-2006, 07:22
Oooo I might bet some people here - since 1990. And before that from about '87 I was using Janet (anyone remember that? Kind of prototype internet for universities).
In 1990 I was happily accessing computers in the US through a Sun gateway machine in London somewhere. It was mainly military and educational stuff - very few pictures even if our X-windows system could have coped with them. Most of it was via native Unix commands :)
Oh and I remember having to get special permission to get a strange new package called "Windows" installed on a Uni machine for a project I was working on. And yes, the head of IT actually said "that will never catch on....".
Now I feel really old.
moving onto the internet in 1995 at uni.
Got the internet at home in 1997 with A*L. I was one of the Beta Testers for AOL 4 :D Which was cool.
^ Pretty much same the as me, except I didn't Beta test 4. A few AOL bills in early 1997 were around the £250 mark.
I was an early user of BT Wireplay, when the only game supported was the flight sim EF2000 and it was very expensive and very unreliable.
I bought my first PC in Jan 1997 for £3k. It was a custom built P166 with 32MB RAM, a 17" Sony Trinitron monitor, 2MB Matrox Mystique graphics card, a massive ISA Creative Labs AWE32 sound card and a super fast 33.6k USR modem.
I struggled by on the 'narrow band' modem until Sept 2000 when I got 512k ADSL from BT. The speed jump was massive, from 3k second a 500 ping to 50k sec and a 40 ping.
Such fun :)
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