What was the internet like in the 90s?

[m1ldslide1]

Anybody remember The Zone? Or the Gaming Zone, or something like that? Before it was purchased by MS in like 1998 it was a free place to play checkers and hearts and stuff with strangers. Included chat, so when I discovered it in like 1995 I was addicted.

BBS' were the shit. There were a bunch in my local area, many dedicated to major MUD and LORD. I was a teenager and couldn't pay the subscription fees, so instead of gaming I was limited to arguing with people in the message boards. To the asshat who said earlier there weren't as many atheists, it was funny that most of the debates I saw were specifically atheists vs. christians. This is when I first realized the potential power of internet communication.

Did anybody ever attend a BBS meetup? That was full-on amusement as well. I wish I could still track down some of those people.

Also mIRC, chatting in various channels but mostly downloading gifs from um... "various" other channels. All over a local ISP.

I never got AOL, but a friend had it and showed me how he could "nuke" people in chat rooms. It would essentially crash the aol program and boot them offline for a bit. Endless entertainment.

 

[Ns1]

I never got AOL, but a friend had it and showed me how he could "nuke" people in chat rooms. It would essentially crash the aol program and boot them offline for a bit. Endless entertainment.

punt/pint programs were awesome. Got my first AOL account terminated for email bombing someone.

 

[Possessed Freak]

Back in the 90's, ICQ was coming into it's own as a messaging site. I haven't used it in 15 years, and just went back the other day and was still able to log in.....

Some of us still have it listed in their profile!

 

[Fritzo]

Don't pick up the phone, I need to connect...

 

[heymrdj]

Anybody remember The Zone? Or the Gaming Zone, or something like that? Before it was purchased by MS in like 1998 it was a free place to play checkers and hearts and stuff with strangers. Included chat, so when I discovered it in like 1995 I was addicted.

BBS' were the shit. There were a bunch in my local area, many dedicated to major MUD and LORD. I was a teenager and couldn't pay the subscription fees, so instead of gaming I was limited to arguing with people in the message boards. To the asshat who said earlier there weren't as many atheists, it was funny that most of the debates I saw were specifically atheists vs. christians. This is when I first realized the potential power of internet communication.

Did anybody ever attend a BBS meetup? That was full-on amusement as well. I wish I could still track down some of those people.

Also mIRC, chatting in various channels but mostly downloading gifs from um... "various" other channels. All over a local ISP.

I never got AOL, but a friend had it and showed me how he could "nuke" people in chat rooms. It would essentially crash the aol program and boot them offline for a bit. Endless entertainment.

As a young person, I cut my teeth on MS Gaming Zone Monster Truck Madness . That was my first online gaming experience. Loved that Thrustmaster racing wheel we had with it.

 

[Oyeve]

Chat Chalet. Hosted by Ron Meyer. Good times. In some ways those chat BBSes were better than the tech we have today.

 

[indy2878]

In the USA, there was no "56k" phone lines, by the way. It was "53.3k" at best. I

I remember 56K "V.92" modems were supposed to change things. And then DSL and AT&T @HOME cable high speed broadband services arrived!


I recall pulling out my hair trying to get dialup to work on redhat linux. Then later found out my internal pci (or ISA) dialup modem was a "winmodem" which was made for wintel computers. So I ended up with a slight "upgrade" to 33.6K external dialup modem using linux "EZPPP" dialup software. Then the sucker fired up and you just cannot believe how happy I was to make my linux box dialout!
SGI O2 with Irix unix, IBM AIX, HP-UX were the top dogs back then. Of course I could never afford those anyway, so that's why a PC pentium 133 MHZ linux box had to do it for me...

There were also those "free 850 hours" for 1 month AOL CD-ROMS that were pretty much everywhere you went in town. Is there even 850 hours in one month? LOLs!

 

[Ichinisan]

I remember 56K "V.92" modems were supposed to change things. And then DSL and AT&T @HOME cable high speed broadband services arrived!


I recall pulling out my hair trying to get dialup to work on redhat linux. Then later found out my internal pci (or ISA) dialup modem was a "winmodem" which was made for wintel computers. So I ended up with a slight "upgrade" to 33.6K external dialup modem using linux "EZPPP" dialup software. Then the sucker fired up and you just cannot believe how happy I was to make my linux box dialout!
SGI O2 with Irix unix, IBM AIX, HP-UX were the top dogs back then. Of course I could never afford those anyway, so that's why a PC pentium 133 MHZ linux box had to do it for me...

There were also those "free 850 hours" for 1 month AOL CD-ROMS that were pretty much everywhere you went in town. Is there even 850 hours in one month? LOLs!

Welcome to Anandtech forums.

Can I haz free 33.6 dialup modem?

 

[indy2878]

Welcome to Anandtech forums.

Can I haz free 33.6 dialup modem?

Thanks for the greetings.
I would donate it to you for free, but I think I gave it to someone else already after I upgraded to broadband internet many years ago....

 

[tcsenter]

I still haz several of the good v.90/92 Lucent, Conexant, and Intel "controllerless" PCI modems, including a Diamond SupraMax PCI modem that I purchased new circa 2004 and has been in my parts collection ever since.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkM6RJf15cg

 

[tcsenter]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkM6RJf15cg

They are claiming Oregon Trail as the popular game of the 90s child? Hell no! Oregon Trail was all the rage in the late 70s through the late 80s! Hungry Hungry Hippos came-out in like 1980! And Yo-Yo's....WTF? I was trying to "walk the dog" back in like 1978!

 

[skipsneeky2]

punt/pint programs were awesome. Got my first AOL account terminated for email bombing someone.

LOL,i found online chatrooms just as exciting myself,yahoo especially when you had a pm bomb booter or a straight disconnect booter or the popular remove a buddy program when you wanted to pull a jedi mind trick on your friends by having your name removed off their list and suddenly they exclaim you hacked their account.:awe:

Nothing had me laughing harder then when some a-hole was on the chatroom mic just being stupid,and having my pm buzz bomber booter just blast his end with 100 ims all buzzing,and the fellow on mic just having a fit.:awe:

Only downfall to those programs were the associated ocx files required to get these programs to run as the special ones like kewlbuttonz.ocx had a backdoor.irc bot but still worth it,but now the yahoo rooms are gone and so is the fun.:|

 

[JimmiG]

I started with 33.6K on my Amiga 1200. It was very slow and very unreliable but still fascinating being able to access so much information. I never got into the whole BBS thing so it was my first encounter with the "information superhighway". The web was a lot smaller, pages were simpler with lower resolution images, but in many ways it was very similar to today's web.

I mostly used to hang out on IRC, browse the web or search AmiNet for cool stuff to download. On the Amiga, sharing and downloading "mods" or music module files was very popular, kind of the precursor to MP3's.

Some time later I got 56k and a new PC, but the connection wasn't that much faster because of the crappy phone lines in rural northern Sweden - maybe 4.5BK/s instead of 3.5KB/sec. Response time was lower though, making it possible to play games like Unreal Tournament online.

It wasn't until 2002 when I moved into my own apartment that I got 2Mb/s broadband. I used to think that connection speed was as fast as anyone would ever need - kind of funny considering I'm on 100Mb/s now, fifty times faster. That's an even bigger difference than the difference between 56k and 2Mb.

 

[ultimatebob]

I remember 56K "V.92" modems were supposed to change things. And then DSL and AT&T @HOME cable high speed broadband services arrived!


I recall pulling out my hair trying to get dialup to work on redhat linux. Then later found out my internal pci (or ISA) dialup modem was a "winmodem" which was made for wintel computers. So I ended up with a slight "upgrade" to 33.6K external dialup modem using linux "EZPPP" dialup software. Then the sucker fired up and you just cannot believe how happy I was to make my linux box dialout!
SGI O2 with Irix unix, IBM AIX, HP-UX were the top dogs back then. Of course I could never afford those anyway, so that's why a PC pentium 133 MHZ linux box had to do it for me...

There were also those "free 850 hours" for 1 month AOL CD-ROMS that were pretty much everywhere you went in town. Is there even 850 hours in one month? LOLs!

Hey now... Lucent Winmodems were great! I had one of them in my old Sony VAIO, and I updated it from 28.8, to 33.6, to K56Flex, to V.90 just with driver updates!

I'll bet that they have a V.92 driver for it now.

 

[OverlordCINMPC]

Who were you on CINMPC BBS?

Just found a post on Google for it...wow this brings me back 20 years ago.

CINCINNATI MULTI-PLAYER CONNECTION BBS


Telnet: cinmpc.com (205.133.194.10)
Email: Sysop@cinmpc.com
Location: Cincinnati OH USA
Dial-Up: 513.825.7900
Software: MBBS Total Nodes: 20 Pay?: YES Login: NEW

Best Gamers Board in Cincinnati! Top DOOM Players! Play 4 way
deathmatch, 8 Player Descent, Heretic, and many other Popular Modem-to
Modem games. Great On-line Games like TW 2002 (Random Option Package),
Blademaster, Vga Planets, etc.. Support Live E-mail, Telenet, FTP, WWW.
We support Ripterm, ANSI, and WorldGroup (Windows Graphical Interface).
Best Sysops, with Great Tech Support! Check-it OUT!

Gary and Wayne /Sysops

 

[Red Squirrel]

I actually kind of miss the 90's internet, not the speeds but the internet websites. I'm so sick of all the overuse of javascript today, video commercials that play automatically, those stupid gray out screens that so many sites seem to use now days, and overall annoyances. I get pissed off while googling for stuff since 80% of the sites use so much annoying crap now.

 

[ultimatebob]

Two words:

Real Player

RealPlayer was great in the first few versions before it became bloatware.

Hell... it could even stream Internet radio in Stereo on a 28.8 connection. Impressive!

 

[SolMiester]

I was in London, and work and ISDN WANs & 64k (1994)....We didnt have all the junk flash and crap filling the webs so the internet was quite fast, even on a 33k modem. Of course there wasnt so many CD or songs on the web so its not like you were downloading heaps anyway.....

I remember in those days, you ripped your own CD, rather than downloading from the web, it was seriously the latest cool stuff, BUT you had to type in each track into and there was no internet database!...LOL

 

[OverVolt]

It was alot more raw. I think it kept some of the morons out because you had to know how to use a computer.

 

[Childs]

It was alot more raw. I think it kept some of the morons out because you had to know how to use a computer.

hehe When I was in college there was a notice in the library saying they had disks for free internet access. Prior to that I just used BBSs to download Doom wads. So I got the disk and installed it. I think it was Winsock that ran, made the usual modem noises, and then I just sat there looking at the screen expecting something to happen, but nothing did. Needless to say I wasnt impressed, and didnt give the internet on a PC another shot for a long time. I think I had the epiphany when I used the university VAX and thought it would be great if I could use Lynx or Elm/Pine from my dorm room. Installing Mosaic definitely made using the internet on my pc more useful. :biggrin:

 

[ImpulsE69]

hehe When I was in college there was a notice in the library saying they had disks for free internet access. Prior to that I just used BBSs to download Doom wads. So I got the disk and installed it. I think it was Winsock that ran, made the usual modem noises, and then I just sat there looking at the screen expecting something to happen, but nothing did. Needless to say I wasnt impressed, and didnt give the internet on a PC another shot for a long time. I think I had the epiphany when I used the university VAX and thought it would be great if I could use Lynx or Elm/Pine from my dorm room. Installing Mosaic definitely made using the internet on my pc more useful. :biggrin:

LOL I remember when I bought my first actual PC and I trolled a bunch of BBS's and GOPHER, then a few months later we got internet in town, went to "browse" and it didn't come with any kind of browser and I was like..so how am I supposed to download a browser without a browser to get to the browser to download!

 

[John Connor]

LOL I remember when I bought my first actual PC and I trolled a bunch of BBS's and GOPHER, then a few months later we got internet in town, went to "browse" and it didn't come with any kind of browser and I was like..so how am I supposed to download a browser without a browser to get to the browser to download!

LOL! When I got my first laptop I said to myself, "self, thank god there's Internet Explorer so I can download Mozilla." Now Firefox is a waist of shit and use Pale Moon instead.

Had dial-up until Comcast right up to 2006. Been high speed ever since.

 

[John Connor]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdtTy9ljfH4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHiyAKjGTZc LMAO!

 

[AViking]

The "internet" felt faster back then because websites didn't have all this flash and other fluff. You used to setup your browser to quickly load the HTML and then fill in the images afterwards and this worked quite well.