In the Beginning?

Zip

Zip

Zip

Soldato
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What was the very first forum? Is it still there?

I want to know when people first thought of the idea of having them.

Anyone know? :confused:
 
Freefaller said:
"Forums" existed in the form of BBS (bulletin board services) over 20 years ago.
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Some of us old fogies started out on these things.

I remember using a 9600baud modem on my Dad's IBM XT to access them.
 
Vertigo1 said:
Some of us old fogies started out on these things.

I remember using a 9600baud modem on my Dad's IBM XT to access them.
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I used them... does that make me an old fogey? And I had a 9600 modem too... :o
 
Just wondering what made you suddenly go .... hmmmm i wonder what the first ever forum was like?
 
Sanzy said:
Just wondering what made you suddenly go .... hmmmm i wonder what the first ever forum was like?
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I dont know really, i was just thinking, something so widely used had to start somewhere.

Freefaller, since your old enough to have the internet back in those dark days. How fast was it compared to dial up?
I cant stand 56k dial up but im assuming you would almost have to open a webpage go out to work and comeback with it almost loaded in the early days.(thank god for broadband) :)
 
In the earliest days, there WERE no web pages, it was all text based.

Ever opened up the command prompt and typed in DIR <Enter>?

That's what it looked like. Just a black screen with white (or green depending on your monochrome monitor) text on it.

Ever wonder why your filenames in DOS are limited to 8 characters? That's because longer filenames would have created larger files. Yes, that's how bad it was.

The actual internet as we know it didn't come along until many years later.

And yes, many times file transfers involved HOURS to do. And we're talking about 110K files. Remember, 25 years ago a 1.44MB Floppy drive was state of the art and a 20MB hard drive was HUGE!!! What a 5 TB drive would be now.......




Ah, the days of manually entering TCP/IP protocols and manually setting up IRQ's. Nope, don't miss them at all.......
 
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My first time going 'online' with with an Atari ST and a 1200/75 baud accoustic coupler, dialing into a local BBS and then Prestel. When I signed up for Prestel as part of the package I got a proper 1200/75 baud modem.
 
I had a 1200/900 modem and used to dial into BB directly, strange to think it was pre internet :D. Used to use one called Wacky Carrot.

Those were the days when d/ling a naughty photo would cost more in phone bill then going to the newsagent and buying a porn mag :D

MB
 
Zip said:
I dont know really, i was just thinking, something so widely used had to start somewhere.

Freefaller, since your old enough to have the internet back in those dark days. How fast was it compared to dial up?
I cant stand 56k dial up but im assuming you would almost have to open a webpage go out to work and comeback with it almost loaded in the early days.(thank god for broadband) :)
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SInce BBS's were text based it wasn't that bad, it was awful when trying to download files though (mainly text files, or configuration scripts that your fellow BBSers would have helped you write). It was basically like navigating a dos box, people were clever and added text templates to some of their BBS services. Then some added colours to their text etc... BBS still runs but is now more "forum" based and has a GUI. I still remember using netscape (some ancient version) to browse the "internet" on a 14.4k modem - it was SO quick and amazing. Then again I had a really quick PC with a 20mb hdd and 4mb of ram :cool:/
 
Zip said:
I cant stand 56k dial up but im assuming you would almost have to open a webpage go out to work and comeback with it almost loaded in the early days.(thank god for broadband) :)
Click to expand...
Don't forget in the early days web pages weren't laden with unnecessary images and web designers actually pared pages down to make them load quicker. The internet was actually quite bearable on dialup when pages were still like that :)
 
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