The Good ol' days

My first experience of internet chat rooms were on AOL. 3 or 4 of us crouched around the screen chatting to strangers to like one in the morning at a mates house (only one with dial up at the time). Then one bright spark gave out my home number, and the other person called it. My mother came marching over asking who this woman was asking for her son.

Funny at the time, but terrifying looking back.

I was left alone with an internet connected PC in my room from the age of 12. Seen some absolute awful stuff over the years, but also learnt loads that I wouldn't have in the "real-world". That time was a big part of my education to the world of computers, including this place.
 
Fubsy said:
My first experience of internet chat rooms were on AOL. 3 or 4 of us crouched around the screen chatting to strangers to like one in the morning at a mates house (only one with dial up at the time). Then one bright spark gave out my home number, and the other person called it. My mother came marching over asking who this woman was asking for her son.

Funny at the time, but terrifying looking back.

I was left alone with an internet connected PC in my room from the age of 12. Seen some absolute awful stuff over the years, but also learnt loads that I wouldn't have in the "real-world". That time was a big part of my education to the world of computers, including this place.
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@West had his PC confiscated as his mum saw me on webcam and thought I was a paedo. I was only 13/14 at the time :(.
 
I don't remember any specific websites in the early day. Barrysworld springs to mind... I just remember having to launch the dial-up and Netscape Navigator. Certainly don't miss those days.. By the time an image came a third of the way down, well... It was time for tea :D
 
I used the internet at Uni in the mid 90's but I didn't own one until 2001 bought in the first 2 months of my first graduate job. I remember using a download manager to install Jumpgate on a 56k modem. I think it took 16 hours to download or something daft. Certainly I had to start and stop several times. I used to love that game and the forums.Fewer games and people were really invested in them.
 
Roar87 said:
Sorry but I was on the internet since AOL chat rooms and the internet is 100x better now, take off the rose tinted glasses. Waiting 20 minutes to download a 5mb MP3 vs instantly streaming 4k movies or playing virtual reality games online, programs like discord that allow live streaming of your games to friends, Twitch, Netflix, Amazon, etc. We all have fond memories of the internet being new and exciting but there were a lot of down sides.
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Everything is just too convenient nowadays, it's easy, boring and predictable, it's as if all the 'character' of life has disappeared. Those 20 minutes of waiting of a 5mb MP3 to download were full of anticipation, now you just get what you want in seconds, then another, then another and so on.

It's for reasons like this that retro is on the up, cassette tapes for example are making a big comeback, as is vinyl.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
I don't remember any specific websites in the early day. Barrysworld springs to mind... I just remember having to launch the dial-up and Netscape Navigator. Certainly don't miss those days.. By the time an image came a third of the way down, well... It was time for tea :D
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Netscape Navigator, totally forgot about that! (Thankfully). I used Barrysworld a lot and tried many different dial-up services, the best one I had (for gaming) gave me a ping of around 180 in UT99 which was pretty good in those days.
 
JBeck said:
Netscape Navigator, totally forgot about that! (Thankfully). I used Barrysworld a lot and tried many different dial-up services, the best one I had (for gaming) gave me a ping of around 180 in UT99 which was pretty good in those days.
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Ri8R9ib.jpg


Genuine on dial-up ping - I can't remember the setup now but it was some short-lived experimental game servers BT ran internally - you had to dial into a specific service which had no internet connectivity (not stuff like Barrysworld, etc.).

In the earlier days of the internet I had around 150ms ping on dial-up in stuff like Quake, etc. over the public internet until the internet became more popular and more people online and it increased to around 180-200ms.

EDIT: Whoever that top player was - they were ridiculously good compared to the skill average in those days - not sure how they'd compare today - I was a reasonably decent player and could barely touch them and it was a fully skill compliment they brought to the game not just someone with wallhacks and an aimbot (which didn't really exist back then anyway) - had timings down really well, using complex trick jumps, etc. etc.
 
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i loved netscape navigator, was miles ahead of any other browser and the first to do tabs, IIRC. like some other things though, it seemed to reach a peak then suddenly just made more and more changes that made it more and more crap.
i started on a 33k modem, PAYG, had to wait to 6PM to surf so it was only a penny a minute :-D oh, the joys of clicking on a pic link and watching it appear down the screen line by line.
 
Rroff said:
Ri8R9ib.jpg


Genuine on dial-up ping - I can't remember the setup now but it was some short-lived experimental game servers BT ran internally - you had to dial into a specific service which had no internet connectivity (not stuff like Barrysworld, etc.).

In the earlier days of the internet I had around 150ms ping on dial-up in stuff like Quake, etc. over the public internet until the internet became more popular and more people online and it increased to around 180-200ms.

EDIT: Whoever that top player was - they were ridiculously good compared to the skill average in those days - not sure how they'd compare today - I was a reasonably decent player and could barely touch them and it was a fully skill compliment they brought to the game not just someone with wallhacks and an aimbot (which didn't really exist back then anyway) - had timings down really well, using complex trick jumps, etc. etc.
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That's a cracking ping, never seen one so low on dial-up, although I was in the sticks at the time and was actually on a 28.8k modem.

I was an out-and-out NW CTF player, didn't really do DM, his trick jumps would have been scripts in the .ini file, pretty easy to do, we used to have hammer jump binds and with the correct timing and movement you could hammer across then hammer off a wall etc, fun stuff but eventually outlawed in cup matches.
 
wolfie138 said:
i loved netscape navigator, was miles ahead of any other browser and the first to do tabs, IIRC. like some other things though, it seemed to reach a peak then suddenly just made more and more changes that made it more and more crap.
i started on a 33k modem, PAYG, had to wait to 6PM to surf so it was only a penny a minute :-D oh, the joys of clicking on a pic link and watching it appear down the screen line by line.
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I remember the waiting for the 6pm thing, I also has one provider (AOL?) which made me redial/reconnect every two hours, the groans from my mates and the other team just before a cup match as I disappeared to reconnect was always priceless.
 
I remember there was a virtual chat room thingy called Blaxxun at one point and they were so trusting that they would let you import your own avatar models. Cue me modelling dildos and all sorts of things in a hooky copy of 3DS Max and wandering around the world harassing people. :D
 
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