What year did you get your first home internet connection?

[twinkletoes]

1980s I ran a BBS, Searchlight in Battle Creek Michigan. Ran it for several years till I moved to Florida in 1987 then ran it here for a couple more years till the Internet took off!

[edDV]

Compuserve was so expensive per minute I used to set up scripts to send and receive interest group messages in bulk, then read them and respond offline, then log on again for a few minutes. If you paid an extra monthly fee, you got to use the service for half price after midnight.

[The_Pioneer]

1996 and all thanks to Compuserve.

I remember it well. I was convinced I'd failed my exams in the summer and the only things that could take my mind off it were the chatrooms (don't use them nowadays) and looking at what seemed quite a small internet.

I didn't have much knowledge about how much phone calls cost or local codes, so I accidentally used a national number for the first month. Once the phone bill arrived I realised/was made to realised why you only use the local number.

We only had a socket in the kitchen, so the day the modem arrived I put my PC in there! I'd sneak down at night and spend hous chatting on compuserve or looking at "things" on the net.

Happy days

[mikesbytes]

The internet came to Australia around the beginning of 1997, but one or two of the uni's had a connection in 1996.

I hung out to 1999. I knew once I had it, I'd be wasting a lot of time. Eventually I caved into sibling pressure to provide a email address.

I do recall using email internally to the company on a DEC Vax back in the 80's.

And once I brought a 1200/300 modem for an Amiga, but never got it to work.

[SatStorm]

My fist home connection, was in 1997. Very few Greeks use to be online back then. I used this same connection (a dial up, 38kb/s), since last July. Now, I pay 38 (+17) euros per month, for a 384/128 iDSL connection (internet in Greece is very expensive).

My fist network experience, was in 1987: A friend of mine use to connect his ZX Spectrum 48K with a univercity, 350km away from Athens, using a ancient modem (I don't remember). That costed a lot back then! Later, some friends of mine connected their Amigas on a local BBS to play games.

My first "internet" experiance, was in 1994 on the univercity (maybe 1993 final quarter). We had plenty 486 running windows 3.11 on a LAN! We use netscape back then.
I knew about internet, because MTV Europe use to talk about it... For a year, it was "Internet is this, internet is that". And I remember when ISDN appeared: It was the greatest thing in the universe back then!

[NormaJ]

About 1996, I think. There was almost nothing to enjoy then. External modems that would dial up with horrible noises, ping pong ping ping…. Not connected, ugh! MS home page, and AltaVista, not much more. And, when downloading any document, it was just to stare at the yellow folder moving through the screen and never ending, then, when you were about to finish, connection would fail, or someone would call you on the phone, oh my God, it was just horrible.
I went into DSL 512/256 K in 2002. Right now I have a 1 MB service, that costs me 39 € per month, and I expect to be upgraded to 2 MB soon, at the same cost.

[ebenton]

you could get online with a Vic20?

Maybe it was a Commodore 64, either that or tom-tom drums with dinosaur skins for heads.

[limpy]

I had a P60 with windows 95a on it. It was always crashing on us. I had AOL but I have no idea what year it was. I'm guessing 95-96 but I really can't remember.

[Craig Tucker]

Wheres the option for - how the hell do you expect me to remember that ?

[CaptainVideo]

I remember trying out Prodigy in 1991 or so but not for very long. But officially I guess October 1994 with AOHell. That didn't last that long either. I used it for gopher and newsgroups and then I signed up for AT&T's network where I used Mosaic to browse this new thing called a web.

[twinkletoes]

Before 1995 I ran a BBS, Searchlight!

[Craig Tucker]

Yea you already told us, check the top of the page

Man this is an old thread

[JohnnyMalaria]

1993.

I've had an email account (not the same one, mind!) since 1984 (first was on JANET).

My first dial-up account was 1979 from my secondary school to the local polytechnic with a real teletypewriter (complete with pink paper tape) and a real modem with rubber cups in which to put the telephone's handset!

[twinkletoes]

1993.

I've had an email account (not the same one, mind!) since 1984 (first was on JANET).

My first dial-up account was 1979 from my secondary school to the local polytechnic with a real teletypewriter (complete with pink paper tape) and a real modem with rubber cups in which to put the telephone's handset!

--------------------------------------------
You expect me to remember that long ago? I can't even remember what I had for breakfast!

[gerryc]

I signed on in 1993 with a program called Prodigy. I remember trying AOL but Prodigy used Mosaic as a browser and I could get graphics and pictures. With AOL I couldn't.

[JohnnyMalaria]

I could get graphics and pictures.

Indeed - and more often than not, I'd turn them off because the 28.8k dial-up was s-o-o s-l-o-w! Turning them on/off was just two mouse clicks away....

[SatStorm]

that's the spirit of the forum... You never know when someone gonna bump an old topic!

[TBoneit]

28.8, I wish I started with a 300 baud Volksmodem. On Compuserve I could read faster than the messages scrolled as they were being received. 1200, then 2400, then a 28.8, then a USR V.everything that was upgradable over the years to 56k.

Now my 3Meg DSL and a 3Ghz computer seem slow.

One thing for sure channel changes on the TV are slower since everything is digital. The Analog channels used to change instantly. Digital takes a short time.

[Faustus]

Poll is close but I think about late 93 or perhaps 94.

edit: It might actually have been early 95 now that I think on it

[edDV]

Why focus on 1996-2007?

The action was 1979-1993.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Why focus on 1996-2007?

The action was 1979-1993.

Don't you find it quite remarkable that, for some members of this forum, that the internet and email has *always* existed.....

I still do a double take whenever someone announces their DOB is 1990-something

[edDV]

There is the "official" DARPA story of the academic internet and then there were the geek trenches of early 300baud up, local BBS, early Compuserve + FidoNet + TheWell, later AOL and EWorld ... all this before 1990, even 1980.

If you watch the PBS or Discovery history, they skip all this. They make you think it all happened in universities.

[Webster]

1995, using Lynx on a unix shell. Prior to that on BBS's - you know.. ymodem/zmodem

Ah..... that bring back some old memories........Back in 1981 I sent a 4Kb program from FL to CA using a 150 baud (spelling??) modem, I was amazed that it actually work on the other end...

[edDV]

1995, using Lynx on a unix shell. Prior to that on BBS's - you know.. ymodem/zmodem

Ah..... that bring back some old memories........Back in 1981 I sent a 4Kb program from FL to CA using a 150 baud (spelling??) modem, I was amazed that it actually work on the other end...

This may sound odd but in the late 80's I was able to login to local Compuserve numbers (US, Tokyo, London, Paris) with my Compaq 286 notebook w/2400 baud modem to execute wire bank transfers and pay my electric, Visa and cable bills through Bank of America.

Later BofA wanted $15/mo to do this. That is when I switched to Charles Schwab and never looked back.

[TBoneit]

Ah yes BBSes... I ran 3 different softwares over the years...
Ending up running Wildcat multiuser on a 486 with 2 Mitsui 1X CDRoms, and 2 Pioneer 6 disc changers (SCSI) you should have heard the noise those things made changing discs.

And before internet e-mail there was a network (I don't recall the name anymore) where you could post a email for somone in California for example even though you were in NJ it was forwarded from BBS to BBS where they all only did local calls until it got delivered. I think I used a program called Robocomm for part of the process.

Then Internet took off and more or less killed off BBSes. Oh well.

[redwudz]

One version of the history of the internet: http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml

I spent a fair amount of time (and money) with a 300 baud modem, waiting till after 11PM to keep the long distance charges down and calling a BBS out of state before the internet. Just text.

[Webster]

I spent a fair amount of time (and money) with a 300 baud modem, waiting till after 11PM to keep the long distance charges down and calling a BBS out of state before the internet. Just text.

or how about telnet the newsgroup for jpg pictures. You know, the one where you have to cut and paste all the texts from multiple message and joint them together before convert them back to jpg file.....