This site is still up:

gopher://gdead.berkeley.edu

Netscape Navigator 9 (2007) handles the protocol. There are also newer clients around.

In the late around 97 or so we had a school lab that used Gopher and we went there to do research. I think the teacher just couldn't book any of the other labs, cause everything else ran 'The Web' (granted in 97 a lot of the computers were still just offline, but most labs had internet). If anyone had the internet at home it was obvious that they used the web. We were all confused. I didn't even realize what it was until maybe 15 years later? I was reading about alternative internet protocols to WWW and recognised 'Gopher' and I was like 'HOLY COW I REMEMBER THAT!'.

That's literally my entire context for Gopher. ...I liked Infoseek a lot better. 😜

Yeah gopher was still at it's peak then, the likes of Infoseek, Excite, Hotbot etc were only just getting good enough to really compete, they were only superficially good before 97ish. Gopher remained best for academic stuff for another couple of years. However, the mass market consumer ISPs at the time like AOL and Compuserve (Which merged around then) had only just grudgingly allowed web browsers in the last year or two, and did not make it easy to use other internet applications. AOL was a particular pain in the ass about it until 4.0. Market demand for the messaging apps and video streamers like RealMedia player forced them to standard winsock though, more so that a few geeks complaining that FTP and gopher was hard to get working. Geeks of course selected a different ISP for preference.

Thanks everyone so far!
While I was around in the 90s, my most vivid memories of the internet started in ~1996.
Before this, it was mainly my father who did go online (CompuServe, Datex-P, BTX/T-Online)..

That being said, I remember IE3 and Mosaic to be around still.
IE3 was also an optional component of WinCIM 1.3/1.4 or so.
This was before they released that bloated Compuserve software for Win95..

Before that, I mainly hang out in mailbox systems, because they were not as dangerous in terms of cost.
They did cost as much (little) as a normal phone call, after all.
The downside was, though, that connection speeds were rather slow via analogue modem.
Sure, there was Integrated Services Digital Network, or simply ISDN, but that seemed as futuristic as a leased line.

Btw, do you guys remember the times before local calls were free of charge?
Back then people were already happy that local calls did cost a bit less than calls to other cities/states, not to mention countries.
I do also vaguely remember that calls during specific day times (or rather, night times) were less costly.

Goper.. I must admit that I had little contact to gopherspace directly in the 90s.
I mainly read about it in computer / communications magazines my father had subscribtions for.
The internet as such seemed to be just like another database or online service, at the time.
Because of my father and older movies, I grew up with the concept of AX.25 networks around the globe that keep the world connected.
Alas, these older networks were superseded, or rather, assimilated by the tcp/ip/udp networks that spread like fire, or rather, expanded like slime molds through their hosts.

Edit: Ok, please forget the last line. I sometimes write weird stuff during nightimes.. 😅

Hi again, just found a Gopher client for the Commodore 64.

https://www.lyonlabs.org/commodore/onrequest/ … pher/index.html

It seems to run on GEOS, that weird little GUI.. 😀
Kudos for the developers being able to create something meaningful in 320x200 pels resolution.
The C128 version of GEOS supported 640x200, also.