We got an "OMG Internet WOW!" floppy disk with our 28.8k modem, which dad bought primarily to fax with.

We signed up with OzEmail, for a bargain $5/hour.

My first uses of it were always supervised, as I would have only been 8 or 9 at the time. I used it for dumb stuff like games cheats and Action Replay codes for the Playstation. Back then I used AltaVista and Webcrawler, the challenge was to find codes for PAL systems, since most sites had codes for NTSC understandably.

Later that year I saw a thing on TV about a HTML editor called "HotDog" (developed by an Australian guy) and I *HAD* to have it. Make my own websites? PHWOAR. So I asked my dad to download it for me. It took him a few goes because of drop-outs, but I remember loving the shit out of that program.

Toward the end of 2001, in the months before ADSL arrived on our street, I used to take advantage of the "TPG 150 FREE HOURS" CDs we got in the mail. The CD contained software to guide you through their sign-up process, but I found that if you simply dialled their number and used the two codes off the back of the flyer as your username and password, you could use the 150 hours as you pleased, obligation free. By this stage I'd discovered "GetRight" so modem drop-outs no longer affected me. It was bliss. I had dozens of these promotional CDs!! My proudest achievement was pirating Alundra 2 for the PSOne, it consumed an entire 150 hour thing, but it was WORTH IT. 😜

Then we got ADSL and the magic disappeared. The Internet had become a boring thing for looking up information. It was an appliance now, like a fridge or a toaster.

IIRC it was around 96-97, on a free internet kiosk to promote a local ISP at a shopping mall. I checked some random sites from that era - Searches on Altavista and almost all user-content hosted at Geocities and some chat rooms from a big ISP portal.

First access was 1996 at a trade fair. It wasn't very interesting. Got dial up access through Freeola (I think they're still going) in 1999 soon after I got my first job and mostly accessed UnitedTrackers.org (where I was board admin for a while) and TraxInSpace.com when they were booming. Joined a (non-famous) tracker group, released some stuff on music disks - had been waiting to release tunes since 1994 so it was life changing for me. Also founded dnbscene.com that year. Good memories.

I think it was in 1995 when i was a student at a it school. Hear about internet, and i was like i can find that info in the library. Why do i need a expensive dail-up connection for that. How wrong was i.

I like how I'm the only HONEST person with regards to Internet useage.

luckybob wrote:

I like how I'm the only HONEST person with regards to Internet useage.

Okay, so I used The Hun's Yellow Pages a bit. And some Yahoo groups. And Robbo's Celebrity Pages. Shame he died. Great site.

luckybob wrote:

I like how I'm the only HONEST person with regards to Internet useage.

I was honest (and I was eight and did not know what porn was xD)

luckybob wrote:

I like how I'm the only HONEST person with regards to Internet useage.

Okay, so I was also downloading images like these:

http://i.imgur.com/8m6deL0.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/iYtIsUF.jpg

😁 😊 😉

I must have first logged in back in ~2000-2001. One of the first webpages I remember visiting was Blizzard Entertainment's main page. I was very very young at the time and I remember being mesmerized by the "Game Worlds" concept and how each series supposedly takes place on a different world/planet.

I also distinctly remember looking for Warcraft III screenshots and waiting for that game to come out. Well worth the wait 😀.

SquallStrife wrote:

Later that year I saw a thing on TV about a HTML editor called "HotDog" (developed by an Australian guy) and I *HAD* to have it. Make my own websites? PHWOAR. So I asked my dad to download it for me. It took him a few goes because of drop-outs, but I remember loving the shit out of that program.

HotDog rocked - I still have some of the HTML I created with it. Hilarious to look at it now - so primitive.

I did the BBS thing during the early 90's and switched to the net gradually, starting in maybe 94? Configuring the connection with Window 3.1 was like some arcane voodoo and I never knew what I was doing - I'd just click things until it worked.

Early dial up. A lot of mIRC. I was an operator with #Israel on IRCnet. 😈 And IRQ of course.

Tetrium wrote:

I can't remember. I think the first time we got internet was about a year before I got into collecting old computers? I mostly played online games and later used it a lot to google the part numbers of all the stuff I had dumpsterdived 😁

Ow drats, I forgot this is about general internet access and not when you got internet at your onw place.

I still remember having to use dial-up (man that sound sure made my ears bleed 😵 ) and before I'd 'activate' it, I'd thought in advance which sites I was gonna visit and what information I was gonna go look for and as soon as the terrible sound was over, I'd very rapidly download any stuff I 'd need and as soon as I was done disconnect ASAP! 😁

...and then I'd start copying all of my downloads to floppies I had formatted in advance, I even used stacks of DD floppies and I think that this is when I first started using programs like WinImage as I'd full-format each floppy first and the ones which hadn't any bad sectors I'd format like a 1.68MB disk or so. The program I used back then to format those disks also had this formatting thingy where the next sector would start a bit later so the floppy wouldn't have to rotate a full time before it could continue writing to the disk (didn't really matter that much though). I'd even 'overformat' DD disks to 820KB or so, I was sooo proud! 🤣!!

But then I got myself a parallel 250MB ZIP drive (second hand btw) and wow! Now that was a gigantic leap forward! ...even though I only had 100MB disks but still 😁

I'd say I first had access to the Internet around 1999 or so, when my parents decided to get 56k dial-up for our house. One of the earliest websites I remember going to was the Fox Kids website, since 5/6 year old me's top interests at that point were Power Rangers and Digimon, the two biggest shows on Fox Kids at that point. I also remember seeing low-quality video clips from those shows on that site, compressed in the magnificent RealVideo format.

And, when I wasn't poking around on that site, it was either online games non-stop until it was time for me to disconnect, or waiting 15 minutes to download a game. Dial-up at our house lasted until about '05, when we finally upgraded to DSL.

I first had internet access in 1993 after returning to my mother's place for the summer. There... wasn't really a whole lot you could do with the internet at that point, but it didn't take me long to realize people were using it to upload games and I started grabbing shareware and freeware games on a regular basis. However, Mom's new computer only had a 14.4 modem, so I first needed permission to tie up the phone line, then I had to find something to download, then download it. :B

It would be another couple years before I ended up befriending someone who taught me the ways of modem gaming. I believe Descent was the first game I ever played multiplayer over the modem and I just got annihilated by my friend.

My first bout of internet gaming was actually in 1997 as I had obtained Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries and for as glitchy and buggy as that thing was, it DID have the ability to easily connect to an internet server and play multiplayer.

I started my website on Geocities in late 1998 as "Gemini000's Programming and Games Page" (it was multiple pages, actually), obtained the pixelships.com domain name in 2000, the pixelmusement.com domain name in 2005 when I launched that business name, and my website has evolved every step of the way into what it is now. :)

Hot damn those dial-up modems were painful, but kindof magical at the same time. My poor mother noticed one day that a phone line had appeared in my bedroom via a very unprofessional looking hole in the ceiling. She must have been out while I installed it because I recall needing to pull a roof tile off to splice the new line into the old; noisy work.

My first encounter with ADSL was when I house sat for a friend in the late 90's. Before he left I asked "how do I connect to the internet?", and was amazed to hear that it was "always on". Whoa.

luckybob wrote:

I like how I'm the only HONEST person with regards to Internet useage.

I was a child, pretty sure I didn't know what porn was. (Or at least, I didn't know about the word "porn")

The year was 1995. Went to Singapore by driving following dad for some of his work. Got a US Robotics Sportster 33.6kbps D/F/V Modem. (Those days, electronics were cheaper than in Malaysia).

I didn't know anything about internet. All I wanted was to have some deathmatch in Doom with my best buddy. He was the one who introduced me to The Net.

And the first page was either Altavista search engine or Happy Puppy gaming website. Went to both sites on the first day and only these two I can recollect whenever I think of the "first day".

Then used to visit gaming magazines websites and actual game publishing websites... for the game patches. The time when patches became the norm. I liked visiting the websites for the games I played, because at that time, it gave me a sense of connection to the games I have.. that the games have a live actual extension out there.

Then came the nightly, sleepless Deathmatch and Dukematch sessions. The Dukematch from Duke Nukem 3D was running so smooth using the phone line. I and my buddy were still staying in the same hometown at that time.

And then the world was never the same again.

1994 or 95. One of the country's two leading BBS networks was jumping on the "let's become an ISP" bandwagon, and we signed up at home. Trumpet Winsock... *sigh*

The first site I remember visiting (at least regularly) was 'Megadeth, Arizona': probably the first example of an "official band site" (at least as we know them today) on the web, and quite a pioneering one in hindsight. 20 years later, its creator put up this retrospective about it - https://medium.com/cuepoint/what-the-hell-was … 149d#.nk4qq6o0i . Those screenshots sure are a blast from the past 😁

But it's true that at the time, the www was more or less still a novelty, and I was still mostly BBSing around until a couple years later when all the local boards went through their Great Extinction Event.

Had no idea how much things were really going to change: at first, most of what you could find on the internet seemed like an extension/adaptation of BBS culture - personal websites about nice/special interest/fan stuff, regionally-oriented irc channels that filled the role of your 'local board', etc. Then almost overnight, you had ICQ, banner ads everywhere, Geocities, Google, commercialization and the dotcom boom.

Uh huh we get it, there's porn on the internet.