What was the internet like in the 90s?

[notposting]

I basically hit up gamefaqs, espn, and looked for porn.

Heh, anyone remember L'Hotel Chat?

 

[Mai72]

I miss Netscape.

 

[norseamd]

netscape was awesome

technically using it right now

 

[Fritzo]

I will say that I have no idea how every single college student is not getting straight A's with today's Internet available. Even in the 90's you had to spend countless hours looking for books in the library and sitting there studying until 1am. The worst was a scarce book that was reserved until after your exams.

Today, any information is instantly available from any device at any time. I feel like I was born 20 years too early

 

[Scarpozzi]

I will say that I have no idea how every single college student is not getting straight A's with today's Internet available. Even in the 90's you had to spend countless hours looking for books in the library and sitting there studying until 1am. The worst was a scarce book that was reserved until after your exams.

Today, any information is instantly available from any device at any time. I feel like I was born 20 years too early

I was in college 10 years ago....trust me, the problem now with grad school research papers is there's too much information.

I had a professor run someone's paper through google and they ended up finding that it was just a straight copy from the internet. She had every class write a paper about plagiarism from that semester on. It made me paranoid enough that I stopped doing a simple list of references at the end of my papers and footnoted the crap out of everything.

Another issue are online databases. They've been around for at least 15 years or more and can be found at most research libraries. The only issue is that the information in most of those are dated by the time they get entered unless you are lucky enough to know who is currently publishing on the topic you're looking for. (Professors often have to publish articles to retain their contracts at research institutions, so much of it is drivel anyhow)

 

[SaurusX]

I remember the myriad number of browser plugins that websites used. One specifically that comes to mind was called Crescendo and would play simple midi tunes on webpages that supported it. That got annoying quick. Other sites requested that you download and install a certain font on your computer, because they decided it made the site look cool.

Also, webrings. They were lists of like websites that people put on their pages so that you could find other sites similar to theirs. For example, a Star Trek sound archive webring would lead you many sites with all sorts of ST sound effects and clips. Once search engines got their act together there was no need for webrings anymore.

Oh, another thing that was very common was the little Internet Explorer or Netscape button/banners that everyone would put on the bottom of their page. They said "this site looks best with _____" and it would have the banner/button of IE 3.0 right below it, which linked you to who-knows-where to download the preferred browser.
Here's a collage of what I mean:

 

[rh71]

I still keep in touch with someone I met on Prodigy around '93 through FB now.
I was running low on space on my 386 WIN 3.1 system so I started deleting files... some large files happened to be in the system folder (oops).
Begged parents to pay ~$180 to gain 1MB RAM so I could play some NHL game... those were epic.
56k was outrageously fast. I remember how excited I was to connect at 33.6 when usually it was 24.
I remember browsing with lynx in college around '95 and how I took over the dorm room phone line because I was always connected.
MUD was text-based which is how I started to learn to type stupid fast. Type or die.
Geocities... Yahoo was the almighty and if you were a rebel you went with Altavista.
<BLINK> tags
Netscape Navigator still felt bulky then
Around '98 I got my parents to buy me an IBM Aptiva for $2700. That pretty much led me toward an IT career.
I remember scamming AllAdvantage pay-to-surf with some keep-alive software.
Quake multiplayer in dorms when they finally put in ethernet around '99.

 

[AViking]

Do lan parties still exist?

 

[Kaido]

Wow, reading through this thread...Geocities, Real Player, Netscape Navigator, hahahaha.

 

[Kaido]

Do lan parties still exist?

More for consoles. I still know a lot of guys who do Xbox/Playstation LAN parties, more for socializing & food tho. A few who still do LAN parties, but since Internet access is so fast now, you might as well game at your workstation & not have to unplug your whole setup anymore...

 

[inf1nity]

Damn necro..

 

[Fritzo]

I was in college 10 years ago....trust me, the problem now with grad school research papers is there's too much information.

I had a professor run someone's paper through google and they ended up finding that it was just a straight copy from the internet. She had every class write a paper about plagiarism from that semester on. It made me paranoid enough that I stopped doing a simple list of references at the end of my papers and footnoted the crap out of everything.

Another issue are online databases. They've been around for at least 15 years or more and can be found at most research libraries. The only issue is that the information in most of those are dated by the time they get entered unless you are lucky enough to know who is currently publishing on the topic you're looking for. (Professors often have to publish articles to retain their contracts at research institutions, so much of it is drivel anyhow)

It's amazing how people don't know the art of rephrasing to prevent google searching. Just reword another paper, change the order of the paragraphs, and you're gold.

 

[slightlyhuman]

great memories in this thread.

i was such a shit hit little kid in the late 90's on the internet. had a lot of fun and learned a lot(how to build a computer in 10th grade) just from wanting to play the latest games.

oh to go back, i would in an instant. fuck the internet today. sure it's all nice. technology is great, but it was just a different time back then.

 

[JManInPhoenix]

sucked ass. Took forever for porn to load.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Playing counterstrike on dial up was fun. Sometimes I would get 'lag spikes' where everything would just freeze for me for a few seconds. The game was still going though. I learned the maps so well that whenever that happened I would navigate myself to a safe area, essentially blind. I would use the keys and navigate but my screen wouldn't update where I was at for 5-10 seconds. Those are skills son!

Ah Counterstrike on dialup. I remember in 1999 between Counterstrike and Napster I basically forced my family to get broadband to get the phone back.

 

[Newell Steamer]

I remember going from 28.8 to 56 for the modem and thinking what a great speed bump that was.

 

[Ns1]

I remember going from 28.8 to 56 for the modem and thinking what a great speed bump that was.

Who got 2 lines for these bad boys?

In 1998, Diamond announced a technology called Shotgun that would promise to double the speed of your internet by bonding two dial-up connections with either two modems or one of their special SupraSonic II dual-port modem cards.

 

[BlitzPuppet]

We got our first computer in year 2000 or so and the internet had come out around that time. Maybe a year before give or take. Good ol' win98 days with dialup. Part of me misses it, another part of me doesn't.

Lol and yep, Netscape. Though if I recall it did not support frames, so most people used IE because back then frames were very popular. Thankfully, that popularity went away.

You got in late to the party.

I remember AOL 3.0 on my dad's pc...and then the upgrade to 4.0 (OMG PICTURE MAIL).

Rhydin chat rooms, TFC multiplayer...man those days were awesome.

Edit: Fuck....someone necro'd

 

[Gibsons]

I remember when usenet was about 99% of my internet, all discussion groups. Every group went through hell in September when the college kids got on. They'd get bored by October.

 

[Darwin333]

Very slow but better than the 14.4 days where you had mostly BBS's to connect to. I do remember being happy as hell when I got my 28.8 modem, god those days sucked... Major Mud was pretty fun at the time though.

 

[Ns1]

gg hf no dis kk? huk ^_^

 

[Fritzo]

Who got 2 lines for these bad boys?

LOL- the ISP I work for supported that. I actually set up the initial equipment for it, USRobotics X2, and K56Flex.

Shotgun connections were insanely expensive. It was $40 for two accounts, plus the cost of 2 phone lines...you were better off with an ISDN connection. 128K meant you always won at Doom

 

[mizzou]

Everyone had their own geocities web page with midi music

 

[BlitzPuppet]

I basically hit up gamefaqs, espn, and looked for porn.

Heh, anyone remember L'Hotel Chat?

lol no idea what that is but I do still talk to someone who I met on "The Palace" chat way back when.

 

[sdifox]

Who got 2 lines for these bad boys?

I am from the acoustic coupler era