What was working in IT like before the Internet?

[Joemonkey]

Inspired by this thread

I was just hoping to get some of the "old timers" in here to give some horror stories about back in the day. I don't know what it would be like to get an error message and not be able to pop it in a search engine and get a MS knowledgebase article, forums posts, other people's experiences, etc.

 

[Homerboy]

pfft before the internet? Lets start slow and say "before google"

 

[Genx87]

Hmm I am just guessing, but without internet connections, users had a limited chance to bring a virus into the network. Your network wasnt exposed on a daily basis to a barrage of attacks from script kiddies.

Sounds like it could be a pretty cushy job.

 

[nweaver]

Realize that it was mostly terminals hooked to your mainframe, and the mainframe had a couple of god-like sysops. To qualify as a Sysop, you had to be able to rewrite the mainframe from scratch 😀

 

[spidey07]

you had these things called phones that you used to call people/support.

 

[Joemonkey]

Originally posted by: spidey07
you had these things called phones that you used to call people/support.

yeah but if you needed support at midnight, and their hours were 8-5...

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Genx87
Hmm I am just guessing, but without internet connections, users had a limited chance to bring a virus into the network. Your network wasnt exposed on a daily basis to a barrage of attacks from script kiddies.

I saw a LOT Of viruses on PCs before the Internet. Boot sector viruses on floppy disks were rampant, and some were destructive. People would insert a floppy to copy some data and leave the floppy in the PC. Next time they started the PC, BANG, they were infected.

In fact, the only virus I've ever had on my personal PC was in 1992, when a Motorola IT tech did some work on my office PC. He had a virus on his diagnostics floppy and transmitted it to my office PC. Then, I copied some files to a blank floppy disk, took the floppy disk home, accidentally booted to it, and had a virus on my home PC.

 

[spyordie007]

It depends on what your definition of "Before the Internet" is.

If you mean before the internet existed than silicon transisters were still a reletivly new technology (8-bit microprocessors didnt exist) and companies like Intel and AMD were in their infancy. And of course most of the people here (myself included) hadnt been born yet.

If you mean working on computers that were not internet connected that was still fairly common just a few years back.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger

Originally posted by: Genx87
Hmm I am just guessing, but without internet connections, users had a limited chance to bring a virus into the network. Your network wasnt exposed on a daily basis to a barrage of attacks from script kiddies.

I saw a LOT Of viruses on PCs before the Internet. Boot sector viruses on floppy disks were rampant, and some were destructive. People would insert a floppy to copy some data and leave the floppy in the PC. Next time they started the PC, BANG, they were infected.

In fact, the only virus I've ever had on my personal PC was in 1992, when a Motorola IT tech did some work on my office PC. He had a virus on his diagnostics floppy and transmitted it to my office PC. Then, I copied some files to a blank floppy disk, took the floppy disk home, accidentally booted to it, and had a virus on my home PC.

That is an amazing story considering the path it has to take to get onto a network.
Almost a darwin scenario in the computer world 😉

 

[erikistired]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger

Originally posted by: Genx87
Hmm I am just guessing, but without internet connections, users had a limited chance to bring a virus into the network. Your network wasnt exposed on a daily basis to a barrage of attacks from script kiddies.

I saw a LOT Of viruses on PCs before the Internet. Boot sector viruses on floppy disks were rampant, and some were destructive. People would insert a floppy to copy some data and leave the floppy in the PC. Next time they started the PC, BANG, they were infected.

In fact, the only virus I've ever had on my personal PC was in 1992, when a Motorola IT tech did some work on my office PC. He had a virus on his diagnostics floppy and transmitted it to my office PC. Then, I copied some files to a blank floppy disk, took the floppy disk home, accidentally booted to it, and had a virus on my home PC.

yeah, i think i saw more viruses back then than now. i haven't had a single virus since we stopped swapping floppy disks around like back in the day.