Indeed; maybe next poll should be what was your first computer? Then to weed out the "Them Darned Kids" don't put anything on there from this millennium. Then rather then the "other" category just have "I'm too young to have used any of these!"
-- Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
Got my first computer in 1982ish (TRS-80 CoCo, 16k extended color basic) -- roughly, it was summer and I think it was between 7th and 8th grades.
Winter 1991, I got my first modem to connect to school. Some time after that, a friend of mine gave me a copy of GeoWorks which had a decent GUI interface for DOS computers. Included on that was an AOL connection application -- this was I think before they became the massive behemoth they became. So I used that for a short time but it was too expensive for a broke college kid ($3.33/hr I think). There had been a support area that did not count against your paid time, but AOL soon caught on that people were using that for personal reasons and cracked down. Unable to afford AOL, I became an early defector, and switched to Delphi which was way cheaper (about $20/mo, 20 hrs included) but wholly text based - no GUI. Delphi was one of the first commercial services to offer access to the internet for its customers - again though, purely text based, roughly 1993. It was around this time I also got into some BBSs because there were some decent local ones which didn't require a long distance phone call (for you whippersnappers, those were very expensive). In 1994 or 95, I got my first ISP - still modem based of course. It wasn't till 1999 or 2000 that I got DSL.
Not that any of this is interesting, but it did give me a walk down nostalgia lane.
Ah, my first computer was a CoCo as well. Bought a 300 baud modem at the same time and found my first MUD. This was back in the early eighties. One of the great things about it was that I could log into the Univ of Maryland's mainframe to do my programming homework. Not many people had access to it from home and it sure was handy. Beat waiting in 3, or more, deep lines behind a terminal. Still had to go to campus for printouts, though.
Anyway, I'm afraid that's as much as my memory will allow me to relate :)
Buffering while streaming... annoying? Ha, I still remember FTPmail "downloading" from ftp.funet.fi (the place from where Linux was released to the world) - in spite of the uuencoding overhead, the pop client was able to resume, the ftp client didn't - lost connection meant a lost download with ftp.
Bah. Netcomm 2400 baud modem to dial into my university's dialup bank of 8 modems (yes, 8 for the whole University). This was in 1990.
It was hard to get on, and the system would boot you after 10 minutes of inactivity. So I set up a modem script to keep dialling until I got a connection, then to open a vi session and type a space every minute. Would fire it off and then wander off for an hour or two before coming back to check if I had managed to connect. Good times.
1999 - "senior enough" to be allowed in research labs; one 286 with 4MB RAM to play with models and numerical algos was always there and mostly mine. Good God, what a pain in the ass the stiff ODEs have been. 1998 - my Uni had no public modems. The VAX/VMS I could access have had some optocoupled terminals at 2400: VT100 clones - green phosphorus. Oh, wow! Graphic primitives and plots on screen! I could forget the traumatizing FORTRAN or the dumb Basic; if only I could wake up to stand in the queue at 6AM in the morning to get a spot (the lab opened access at 9). 1987 - couldn't get access to anything better than ZX Spectrum clones or a single CP/M if you were in front of the queue. Personal 8" floppies were quite hard to get, smuggler stuff (communist regime at that time) 1986 - the only way to have programs running - have your stack of punch cards collected for the sole weekly run allowed to students (IBM360) - after 3 attempts, I gave up, too many syntax errors.
2002 - got enough of a wage to afford buying a 486 with 8MB RAM and 120MB HDD and the US Robotics modem. 8 month worth of savings. EMAILftp to funet.fi to get linux (thanks to Trumpet Winsock).
Only the fact that I hate putting too much about myself in a public place stops me in answering to your question. My apologies for that - the only info: southwards of Estonia (which is of course self-evident, since northward of Estonia there's no other country formally under a communist regime).
I'm curious, do you know if the systems you were connecting to had more than 9600 baud modems? For years I had a hell of a time with the connection every time it would rain. By the time they would send someone out, the line would dry out.
I'm curious, do you know if the systems you were connecting to had more than 9600 baud modems?
As it happens, yes, I know; they did, also on 14.4kbaud modems.
For years I had a hell of a time with the connection every time it would rain. By the time they would send someone out, the line would dry out.
That's the very reason no connection over 9600 was stable. As the infrastructure was out of any of the two sides' control, no attempt was ever made to send someone out, it was well understood it will be useless.
My first computer was a Timex-Sinclair 1000 in 1982. Second was Radio Shack, was on Compuserve about 1985, then bullitin boards, finally in 1997 the internet.
I bought a mate's ZX81 for ~#40, I think, perhaps that included a 16K RAM pack, when he bought a Spectrum. I grabbed a Speccy when the 48K came down to #125 (from #175 at launch), probably early 1984. In ~1986 I was then fortunate enough to win a 300 and 75/1500 half-duplex modem in a Your Spectrum competition, and from that I got access to a bulletin board called The Gnome At Home. I also would occasionally pop in and get slaughtered on AberMUD. I did bounce around between PAD prompts on various systems in late 1988, which was I guess the first real internet experience, even if it's nothing like modern day internet.
-- Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
Even 1997 when I first got on (after Compuserve in the '80s and then BBs) it was still nothing like now. No videos except animated GIFs, no Google, no Firefox, no Chrome, no YouTube, no high speed access unless you were at a university, no Facebook or Twitter or any other social networks, and you needed a real computer; no phones or tablets on the net then. And there are a thousand times as many people on it now.
First use of computer in 1977. Wang PCS 2200. Then TRS-80. Then IBM 1136. Then another super minicomputer. Then an explosion of microcomputers settling on Mac in the 1980's and first half of 1990's.
Online with CompuServe in later part of 1984. Later Mac Symposium or something like that, which seemed surprisingly similar to AOL when it arrived. Got started with the four horsemen of apocalypse (telnet, email, ftp and usenet) in 1988 via leased line connecting local net to remote office, which was on the internet. Only 56 kbps. But it was way better than dial up. A NeXT box made a good server.
-- To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by Absolutely.Geek on Monday June 26 2017, @11:36PM (26 children)
First use of a computer in 85/86; first computer at home in 87 (Amiga 500 for Christmas).
First online in the early 90's at a friends place; got my first permanent connection at home in late 96....
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 27 2017, @12:05AM (2 children)
Young people have been on the internet their entire lives, making a 20-year-old indistinguishable from "old people" according to this poll.
(Score: 2) by Absolutely.Geek on Tuesday June 27 2017, @12:58AM
Indeed; maybe next poll should be what was your first computer? Then to weed out the "Them Darned Kids" don't put anything on there from this millennium. Then rather then the "other" category just have "I'm too young to have used any of these!"
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 06 2017, @02:27AM
except where the adult thats been on 20+ years doesnt talk like a fucking retarded aoler 'u' 'ur' 'zomg' 'lol'.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday June 27 2017, @05:04AM (3 children)
First use of computer in '81, did dial up BBS in early '90s.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday July 10 2017, @04:10AM (1 child)
Got my first computer in 1982ish (TRS-80 CoCo, 16k extended color basic) -- roughly, it was summer and I think it was between 7th and 8th grades.
Winter 1991, I got my first modem to connect to school. Some time after that, a friend of mine gave me a copy of GeoWorks which had a decent GUI interface for DOS computers. Included on that was an AOL connection application -- this was I think before they became the massive behemoth they became. So I used that for a short time but it was too expensive for a broke college kid ($3.33/hr I think). There had been a support area that did not count against your paid time, but AOL soon caught on that people were using that for personal reasons and cracked down. Unable to afford AOL, I became an early defector, and switched to Delphi which was way cheaper (about $20/mo, 20 hrs included) but wholly text based - no GUI. Delphi was one of the first commercial services to offer access to the internet for its customers - again though, purely text based, roughly 1993. It was around this time I also got into some BBSs because there were some decent local ones which didn't require a long distance phone call (for you whippersnappers, those were very expensive). In 1994 or 95, I got my first ISP - still modem based of course. It wasn't till 1999 or 2000 that I got DSL.
Not that any of this is interesting, but it did give me a walk down nostalgia lane.
(Score: 2) by black6host on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:04PM
Ah, my first computer was a CoCo as well. Bought a 300 baud modem at the same time and found my first MUD. This was back in the early eighties. One of the great things about it was that I could log into the Univ of Maryland's mainframe to do my programming homework. Not many people had access to it from home and it sure was handy. Beat waiting in 3, or more, deep lines behind a terminal. Still had to go to campus for printouts, though.
Anyway, I'm afraid that's as much as my memory will allow me to relate :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @10:48PM
first computer 1978, cray. first "internet" arpanet.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday June 27 2017, @08:32PM (14 children)
Buffering while streaming... annoying?
Ha, I still remember FTPmail "downloading" from ftp.funet.fi (the place from where Linux was released to the world) - in spite of the uuencoding overhead, the pop client was able to resume, the ftp client didn't - lost connection meant a lost download with ftp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @10:15PM (13 children)
My first modem was 28.8k on Win 3.1 and it took about 8 hours to download (I think) IE3.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday June 28 2017, @11:04PM (12 children)
Mine was a US Robotics, capable of 14.4k, never got to connect at over 9600bsp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Thursday June 29 2017, @04:29AM (9 children)
Bah. Netcomm 2400 baud modem to dial into my university's dialup bank of 8 modems (yes, 8 for the whole University). This was in 1990.
It was hard to get on, and the system would boot you after 10 minutes of inactivity. So I set up a modem script to keep dialling until I got a connection, then to open a vi session and type a space every minute. Would fire it off and then wander off for an hour or two before coming back to check if I had managed to connect. Good times.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 29 2017, @05:27AM (7 children)
1999 - "senior enough" to be allowed in research labs; one 286 with 4MB RAM to play with models and numerical algos was always there and mostly mine. Good God, what a pain in the ass the stiff ODEs have been.
1998 - my Uni had no public modems. The VAX/VMS I could access have had some optocoupled terminals at 2400: VT100 clones - green phosphorus. Oh, wow! Graphic primitives and plots on screen! I could forget the traumatizing FORTRAN or the dumb Basic; if only I could wake up to stand in the queue at 6AM in the morning to get a spot (the lab opened access at 9).
1987 - couldn't get access to anything better than ZX Spectrum clones or a single CP/M if you were in front of the queue. Personal 8" floppies were quite hard to get, smuggler stuff (communist regime at that time)
1986 - the only way to have programs running - have your stack of punch cards collected for the sole weekly run allowed to students (IBM360) - after 3 attempts, I gave up, too many syntax errors.
2002 - got enough of a wage to afford buying a 486 with 8MB RAM and 120MB HDD and the US Robotics modem. 8 month worth of savings. EMAILftp to funet.fi to get linux (thanks to Trumpet Winsock).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 29 2017, @05:42AM
I forgot. The in '99 286 had 256kB on RAM not 2MB.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Thursday June 29 2017, @08:50AM (3 children)
Wow, '99 is late for a 286. Was that a typo and you meant '89?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 29 2017, @10:12AM (2 children)
Yes, that 1989, 1988 and 1992 instead of 1999, 1998 and 2001.
Hypoglycemia, I guess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by tibman on Friday July 14 2017, @10:07PM (1 child)
Glad that was a typo! Was thinking about the 400mhz AMD k6-2 i had in 1999. Glorious gaming rig with a 3Dfx Voodoo 3 2000.
That 486 in 1992 was 33 or 66mhz? Did it have a turbo button?!
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 14 2017, @11:51PM
Turbo button.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday July 03 2017, @09:13PM (1 child)
May I ask which one, as I sit in the comfort of a modernised, liberated, and otherwise westernised Estonia?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 03 2017, @10:27PM
Only the fact that I hate putting too much about myself in a public place stops me in answering to your question.
My apologies for that - the only info: southwards of Estonia (which is of course self-evident, since northward of Estonia there's no other country formally under a communist regime).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday July 10 2017, @04:14AM
I don't recall the brand, buy my first modem was 2400.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Tuesday July 18 2017, @01:01AM (1 child)
I'm curious, do you know if the systems you were connecting to had more than 9600 baud modems? For years I had a hell of a time with the connection every time it would rain. By the time they would send someone out, the line would dry out.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday July 18 2017, @01:38AM
As it happens, yes, I know; they did, also on 14.4kbaud modems.
That's the very reason no connection over 9600 was stable. As the infrastructure was out of any of the two sides' control, no attempt was ever made to send someone out, it was well understood it will be useless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday June 30 2017, @03:41PM (2 children)
My first computer was a Timex-Sinclair 1000 in 1982. Second was Radio Shack, was on Compuserve about 1985, then bullitin boards, finally in 1997 the internet.
Great poll!
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday July 03 2017, @09:26PM (1 child)
I bought a mate's ZX81 for ~#40, I think, perhaps that included a 16K RAM pack, when he bought a Spectrum. I grabbed a Speccy when the 48K came down to #125 (from #175 at launch), probably early 1984. In ~1986 I was then fortunate enough to win a 300 and 75/1500 half-duplex modem in a Your Spectrum competition, and from that I got access to a bulletin board called The Gnome At Home. I also would occasionally pop in and get slaughtered on AberMUD. I did bounce around between PAD prompts on various systems in late 1988, which was I guess the first real internet experience, even if it's nothing like modern day internet.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday July 04 2017, @05:09PM
Even 1997 when I first got on (after Compuserve in the '80s and then BBs) it was still nothing like now. No videos except animated GIFs, no Google, no Firefox, no Chrome, no YouTube, no high speed access unless you were at a university, no Facebook or Twitter or any other social networks, and you needed a real computer; no phones or tablets on the net then. And there are a thousand times as many people on it now.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday July 11 2017, @05:48PM
First use of computer in 1977. Wang PCS 2200. Then TRS-80. Then IBM 1136. Then another super minicomputer. Then an explosion of microcomputers settling on Mac in the 1980's and first half of 1990's.
Online with CompuServe in later part of 1984. Later Mac Symposium or something like that, which seemed surprisingly similar to AOL when it arrived. Got started with the four horsemen of apocalypse (telnet, email, ftp and usenet) in 1988 via leased line connecting local net to remote office, which was on the internet. Only 56 kbps. But it was way better than dial up. A NeXT box made a good server.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.