When was the first time you used the Internet?

[Anghang]

1993 on a 486dx-33

 

[freegeeks]

1994, first year college on a unix station. I only remember that Netscape was the browser and that it was slow as hell

 

[SoulAssassin]

92 or 93, local bbs got newsgroups then I had a hacked shell account at Rutgers for a while. I would use their T1 to pull down warez from various places. I couldn't believe how fast a 1.44MB floppy would download over that, I remember getting almost daily 0-day builds of Win95 betas.

 

[venkman]

Compuserve for the win

Lots of free pr0n and I randomly ended up in a chat room with Mike Fertello (coach of the Cavs at the time)

 

[TridenT]

I am not sure. Maybe 1995 or 1996. My family was poor so we couldn't afford a computer or the internet for quite a while. :-/ I got on the internet when I was at my cousins house for BBQs. She got online, and I watched... I got to get on sometimes and click some stuff, it was interesting... I had good reading skills for that age at least

 

[Poulsonator]

1991-1992, my senior year in high school. Once I went off to college, things really blew up.

On a side note, it's crazy that I graduated high school 17 years ago (this May). HALF of my life ago, I graduated high school. Yowzers.

 

[mxyzptlk]

Age 16, the year was 1996. I was in school and the first thing I typed into the yahoo search engine was "mortal kombat" I got some geocities, fan-made site with really bad gifs. It had that fire gif. You know the one. I didn't get a computer at home until later the next year.

 

[Rubycon]

Early 80's definitely before Gates and Woz were doing their big thing.

 

[SoulAssassin]

Also, proprietary/closed networks like early prodigy and compuserv shouldn't count.

 

[Eli]

I've been online since I was 14; late 1995.

2400bps! w00t.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: DisgruntledVirus

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
This is my first time on the internet.

FelixDeKat
Lifer

Posts: 11392
Joined: 08/04/2000

Shens

:facepalm;

 

[cardiac]

Back in 1978, I took a Fortran programming (Yeah punchcards!) class at Purdue University Calumet campus, and we were tied in with the main server in Lafayette, Indiana. Our system took up a 10X16' room, and had to be kept around 60 degrees if I remember right. We could send messages through the Lafayette server to other colleges, but limited to 1 per day. It was the precurser to ARPANET . Not sure when they began calling it ARPANET. Had my first PC in 1985 ( single 5-1/4" floppy and 64k of ram), with a Commodore and a few others prior to that. Crap, I'm old.....

Bob

 

[trmiv]

Around 1994 with my first ISP Netcom. I went to a party at a friend's college dorm and he had internet access. I saw that, and said "I've GOT to get this!" Set it up the next day.

I also had Prodigy before that, but there was no internet access from that when it first started so that doesn't count if you're talking strictly "internet."

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think around 92 or 93. Anyone remember TIAC.net , in the northeast? had a shell acct., had to run "SliRP" to get a PPP connection on the shell machine, in order to use netscape on my pc.

 

[herm0016]

we had a 286 around 93 or so. windows 3.1, AOL dial up. it was pretty sweet, we had an external modem the size of a laptop with a keypad on the front of it to dial the number at first, then we got an internal modem. I was about 9 yo.
the machine had a sound blaster card, and the sound blaster speakers. we started out with a 500 meg HD i think, then added a 2 gig a few years later. i imagine it had 64k of ram.

 

[Nocturnal]

Right around 1996 I got a dial-up account for my birthday.

 

[Barfo]

Originally posted by: Loop2kil
1991 - Pentium 60($3500 machine) and paid for AOL by the hour.

The Pentium was introduced in 1993

 

[ultimatebob]

Probably around 1994... the local computer club was at the local hospital, which had a T1 line. The adults who ran the club were cool, and let us surf for as much pr0n as we wanted using Netscape version 1! It didn't look quite right on a 256 color display, though

 

[Dear Summer]

2000
when I was 15

I got addicted to games, chatting, internets so I became a biggest homebody and loser through the rest of high school. College I played more games and didn't go out as much until after my junior year

 

[AccruedExpenditure]

Originally posted by: LS21
1994 at the public library's internets... nintendo.com on netscape 2.0 and lynx

I seriously doubt you used Netscape 2.0 in 1994.

 

[thomsbrain]

1992, GOPHER. Text-based FTW!
A year or two later we got Compuserve at home, which I used to download tiny pictures of cars from Car and Driver's portal.

 

[mrSHEiK124]

2001 - HP Pavilion w/Athlon XP 1600+, 512 MB RAM (still baffles me how the fuck Dell sold computers with 512 MB RAM well into 2007-2008), and shitty VIA KM133. Road Runner was fast though

If it's the first time I used the Internet, 1996 at a neighbor's house with AOL. I loved trying to figure out (later on) how to get downloaded stuff from their, at the time, largely inferior 133 MHz Compaq with a Pentium to my HP with a 200 MHz Pentium MMX. Downloading ANYTHING took hours, then I had to figure out how to get >1.44 MB files around.

I think I ended up putting WinZip's installer INSIDE of a self-extracting WinZip EXE that was split across 1.44 MB pieces, if it even supported that at the time. Then I could just use split ZIP files

 

[LikeLinus]

Probably around 1992. I had Compuserv, Prodigy and then AOL. I moved on to a real ISP (concentric i think?) around 1995.

 

[destrekor]

1994 - my parents bought an Acer with Windows 95, I think like a 75mhz Pentium, a sweet ISA soundcard (can't remember which), 4gb HDD, and cannot remember how little RAM it had.
Got an AOL account, and at age 7 I was introduced to the internet. At least, I think we got hooked up with AOL at the time, cannot honestly remember if we ended up having internet back then or not.

But it came with some sweet educational games. I actually enjoyed them. Age 7, couldn't know any better. I had a ball with that system.

In 1997 we upgraded to a Gateway machine, and I know for sure we had AOL with that one. So I was either 7 or 10 when I first was playing around on the 'net. Neffing came much, much later in life though.

 

[ballmode]

I had been using the internet since 1996, but it wasn't till 1998 when I got a computer for my own to tinker with. I was 14