Your first connection and memories of the internet.

Middle of 1998 with BT internet. Bought a US Robotics 33K modem specially. First thing I did was to download the scripts of the first two Monty Python films. :D
 
Karl said:
I used to play Red Alert with my mates over the phone line, and aside from serial cable gaming, that was the best gaming experience I could get. :)
Click to expand...

Ah, the early days of multiplayer RTSs where you didn't win until you'd wiped out your opponent's entire army.

Spent many an hour annoying my mate by hiding a submarine in a corner of the water or choosing green as my colour and hiding a lone soldier behind a tree. :D
 
Tunney said:
Ah, the early days of multiplayer RTSs where you didn't win until you'd wiped out your opponent's entire army.

Spent many an hour annoying my mate by hiding a submarine in a corner of the water or choosing green as my colour and hiding a lone soldier behind a tree. :D
Click to expand...

my mate did the same in Age of Empires, dug a small hard to see tunnel into the heart of a massive woodland and built a building at the entrance of it, he would then destroy the building and essentially block it off h was so far away that noting could reach his one lonely villager.
 
Tunney said:
Ah, the early days of multiplayer RTSs where you didn't win until you'd wiped out your opponent's entire army.

Spent many an hour annoying my mate by hiding a submarine in a corner of the water or choosing green as my colour and hiding a lone soldier behind a tree. :D
Click to expand...

Yes! The best way of winning that game was building planes. Tonnes and tonnes of planes very quickly. You could have it all done and dusted inside 20 mins if you could click fast enough. :D
 
Started on a 2400bps modem in 1995 which my Dad had to dial in to office. I had to drag the whole IBM PS/2 PC (google image it) to near the front door as so to plug the modem in to master socket, no other socket would work nor a longer cable.

Evntually my Dads work got rid of the PS/2 behemoth and got a smaller 386 PC. Then I had a 28.8k modem and started on Compuserve in 1996.

Then I moved on to AOL and spent long time in the chat rooms. Got friendly with this girl from Cambridge. Ended up driving up there, going out and getting drunk with her, smashed her pasty and then drove home the next day with a smile on my face. Never spoke to her again.
 
First connection was an 8000 BPS ISA modem, checking email and downloading games and information via the BBS system /ahh, direct dial Doom deathmatches were awesome, the phone bill was not :D

Later upgraded to a 28K job with built in Sound Blaster, was the schizz, Compuserve chat and browsing the WWW with Mosaic (first great browser, became IE), awesome awesome.

The best invention of the early days was by far the Microsoft Internet Gaming Zone (later the MSN Zone) and it's contemporaries which enabled matchmaking for games so you didnt need ot meet in a chat room and then set up the game.
 
I remember those original BT ADSL modems being a real pain with AMD chipsets and some Intel ones, from memory they drew just on the 500ma maximum limit for USB, and as a result if the one you received was just a little out of spec it would trip the fuse in some usb chipsets.

It used to be a very common topic in the general hardware section (before networking even from memory), and the advice was typically to either try a powered usb hub, make sure it was the only device on the host controller (no mouse etc), or to throw it under a steam roller and buy a better modem :p
Didn't they get called something like frogsplat modems at times, or is my memory failing as I reach my decrepitude.
 
Anyone else remember dialling into somewhere local with an exchange system, then waiting for them to hang up and as you were still connected on one of their lines pressing [prefix not shown as some very old places may still have these systems] to bridge to one of their other lines then dial your international BBS? hehe, circuit switching FTW.
 
My first memories of connecting to the internet was immediately looking for pornography. So it took a while for large images to download. You had to wait for it to load from top to bottom. Then suddenly...

ExcitableAcrobaticCrane.gif
 
For me:

1998-99
56k US Robotics modem
The sound of connection
Dircon was the service provider (I didn't realise the background to the company - not that it matters)
Playing MechWarrior 3 for the first time on-line. I still remember my first game, against an American chap called Claymore who killed me and my mech, and then talked me through the principles of lag shooting and water-mechs.
 
Bit of a bump but forgot to add the joys of GetRight and other DL management programmes to overcome the inevitable disconnections, leaving the computer on overnight to download massive 70mb updates for TFC etc.

Buying a Diamond SupraMax 56k USB modem only to realise I should have bought the serial SupraExpress to attain the lofty heights of a sub 200ms ping!

Those were the days!
 
Mid to late 90's on a 56k modem with Demon ISP.

I remember always waiting for 6 o'clock so the phone charges went to 1p / min to play Close Combat 3 with my friends....and voice comms was done by using a mobile phone at the same time :D

Oh and the CC3 multiplayer ladder rating system on some gamezone....MSN?
 
I think we first went online in 1998, we eventually had BT Surftime (I think it was called), so we could only use the internet from 6pm onwards otherwise we'd be charged.

Me and my brother would share, I would use the internet from 6-8pm and he would use it from 8-10pm.

I remember the whole Kazaa downloads and it taking around 3 hours to download a 3 minute porno.

Ah memories.

Now I'm running BT Infinity downloading 3 minute pornos in seconds.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom