Who here still use old school internet services such as IRC and Usenet (NNTP)?

Cromulent

Cromulent

Cromulent

Soldato
Joined
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Location
England
Many people today don't even know that IRC or Usenet (should really call it NNTP since that is the protocols actual name) exist but actually I've found them to be some of the most helpful internet resources to use to learn things. For instance I learnt to program in C largely due to the help I received on the Usenet newsgroup comp.lang.c and in the IRC chat room ##c on Freenode.

So who here still uses these old internet resources? I'm actually looking for a decent Usenet / NNTP client on Windows as we speak. On Linux I used to use Thunderbird but I'm sure there must be a much nicer one available for Windows.

I'm actually on the look out for a couple of new IRC chat rooms as well that I can join. I'd like to find a good one dedicated to PC gaming and one dedicated to PC hardware but because there are so many IRC networks finding a decent channel is pretty hard.
 
I used it a while ago from time to time, but never really spent that much time online when it was at its peak, it was too busy and I wasn't willing to invest the time to use a resource that wasn't of interest to me.
 
I occasionally still use IRC when working on open source projects at work.

I really miss using it socially though. I racked up such a big phone bill chatting to strangers as a teenager.
 
I still download everything from Usenet. I honestly dont see a plausible alternative to it. Bit-Torrent doesn't appeal at all (I do not wish to share anything), what else is there bar private FTP groups?
 
Still using both daily. Would be lost without IRC to talk to peeps while doing some of the Open Source development.

Strangely there are still some that don't want to talk using Skype or other chat platform except using a long distance phone call
 
of course

in a funny turns of events, even after encrypted nntp started being abused by joe public a lot of the old fserves sprang back up. IMHO a good thing.

joe public should stick to torrents :mad:
 
First used IRC back in 93 and was pretty much on it daily for around the next 10 years. Now only very occasionally hop on to catch up with a few bods, who clearly still can’t give it up!
 
Dynix said:
Up until about two weeks ago, I've used IRC almost every day for the past 18 years. :eek:
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Ooof - I used it pretty much every day from 1996 to 2006 IIRC - and thanks to a BNC had pretty much 100% uptime through that period :D can't remember when I first discovered it - probably 92 or 93 but didn't really get into it until later - especially quakenet for competitive online gaming.

Can't remember the last time I hop on at all - probably 2011 or so - 90% of the old channels I was in were empty but there was still logs of the odd user still hopping on from time to time - funny how 1-2 people persisted long after most had gone.

EDIT: Also learnt a lesson about using consumer hardware for enterprise type use back in those days heh - I had a server that was chucked together from some old desktop PC parts joined to IIRC enterthegame that parsed links for malware - the strain of handling that kind of load resulted in both the HDD and PSU melting down spectacularly - to the point the rack was too hot to comfortably touch ~18 inches away.
 
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From about 1998 - 2002 I'd have been on DALnet IRC servers almost constantly, getting disconnected every two hours by NTL.

I can't remember the last time I used it but I do miss the days of spending hours on IRC and ICQ.
 
Back in the late 90's into the early 00's we used to have a very popular channel on efnet.demon.org.uk called #WarezStoke that was home to some of the big couriers back in the day and a few of the early scene groups.

Another fascinating channel was #Panties based in Nova Scotia, some really weird folkd in there.

Then of course on Dalnet the XDCC bot channels with the latest movies, app, games etc were a hit.
 
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