When did you first get online and what was it like?

[renard_ruse]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f06QZCVUHg

 

[Wok]

I connected to the BBS in the early 1990's at school using an Amiga 2000. Many years would pass before I connected in 1999 using some hole in the wall ISP before moving to The Grid.

 

[Sonny Limatina]

OK, I'll join the fogey talk.

I learned FORTRAN in college and programmed on punchcards. Little ants carried the code underground to this massive server room, where the steam-powered machine chugged and chugged, spit smoke out a smokestack, and sent the ants back to the main building with instructions for what to write on the rolls of spindled computer paper that got spit out at the pick-up window. You'd read the ants' writing and try to figure out where you went wrong, then sit down and make new punch cards for the ants. A simple if-then program could take all night to get right, but only 45 minutes of that was actual programming; the other 7:15 was ants going back and forth to the steam engine.

I used the school's intranet from time to time, but it was hit or miss: you'd sent a message to another terminal somewhere and hope someone was sitting at it at the time.

I used a networked Wang system for my first job. We incorporated hypertext before we incorporated internet.

Round about 1992 I got online, when pages would take a few minutes to open and reveal either a couple of paragraphs of gee-whiz text or else entire documents of mostly arcana. I realized recently that I can't remember if I used CompuServe or Prodigy, but I do remember switching to AOL when one closed down. I could wiki but I'm not motivated enough to click in the little window right up there^.

My brother was ahead of the curve with the earmuff modems in the 80s. I had whatever the fastest modem was in the mid-90s, which they were selling as being faster than phone lines could carry. I don't remember when they switched to DSL/cable, but whenever it was, I switched with it.

My father had WebTV. In generations to come, that goofy product will be seen to have been 20 years ahead of its time.

 

[where]

I wish I had a wang.

 

[Byron In Exile]

OK, I'll join the fogey talk.

I learned FORTRAN in college and programmed on punchcards. Little ants carried the code underground to this massive server room, where the steam-powered machine chugged and chugged, spit smoke out a smokestack, and sent the ants back to the main building with instructions for what to write on the rolls of spindled computer paper that got spit out at the pick-up window. You'd read the ants' writing and try to figure out where you went wrong, then sit down and make new punch cards for the ants. A simple if-then program could take all night to get right, but only 45 minutes of that was actual programming; the other 7:15 was ants going back and forth to the steam engine.

I used the school's intranet from time to time, but it was hit or miss: you'd sent a message to another terminal somewhere and hope someone was sitting at it at the time.

I used a networked Wang system for my first job. We incorporated hypertext before we incorporated internet.

Round about 1992 I got online, when pages would take a few minutes to open and reveal either a couple of paragraphs of gee-whiz text or else entire documents of mostly arcana. I realized recently that I can't remember if I used CompuServe or Prodigy, but I do remember switching to AOL when one closed down. I could wiki but I'm not motivated enough to click in the little window right up there^.

My brother was ahead of the curve with the earmuff modems in the 80s. I had whatever the fastest modem was in the mid-90s, which they were selling as being faster than phone lines could carry. I don't remember when they switched to DSL/cable, but whenever it was, I switched with it.

My father had WebTV. In generations to come, that goofy product will be seen to have been 20 years ahead of its time.

You were lucky. We never had a pickup window. We used to have to fish our printouts out of a lake.

 

[garbage can]

I wish I had a wang.

How big of a Wang would you need.......?.......

We had a Wang in the '80's, a card punched calculator.

This was after Peter North was using his wang....which was more powerful than our Wang..............

 

[Balladeer08]

What about for you?

300 baud modem, QLink. I'd go make a cup of coffee after a post, I could read faster than the incoming message stream. Great group of people though, wonderful technical knowledge, overall I'd say more educated than the people on line these days.

I guess you could say the data transfer rate has gotten faster, and the people slower. 8)

 

[Byron In Exile]

http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/still-image/Bell_Labs/dataphone.102627249.lg.jpg

 

[oggbashan]

My first computer with picture of inflammable card read/punch machine.

Of course IBM claimed we were using it beyond its designed capacity...

 

[islandman]

If we're now talking about first computers, mine was a Commodore 64 with its accompanying, external floppy drive and Okidata dot-matrix printer.

Flash forward a few years and it was an Apple 2E, followed by an Apple IIGS.

First computer in school was a Commodore Pet.

 

[Byron In Exile]

Awesomesauce

My first computer with picture of inflammable card read/punch machine.

Of course IBM claimed we were using it beyond its designed capacity...

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n307/byroninexile/et/ibm1401.jpg

 

[glynndah]

i read this as '"what did you first get online..." i was kinda disappointed, although i am enjoying all the geezer geek speak.

 

[Byron In Exile]

i read this as '"what did you first get online..." i was kinda disappointed, although i am enjoying all the geezer geek speak.

It's about the days before flint when one had to make fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together.

 

[Saint Peter]

I took a Fortran class in 1983. I ruined a whole forest worth of paper cards.

 

[Wok]

I took a Fortran class in 1983. I ruined a whole forest worth of paper cards.

You are a Great American!

 

[Byron In Exile]

I took a Fortran class in 1983. I ruined a whole forest worth of paper cards.

Learning Fortran in 1983?

Were you majoring in Computer History?

 

[Saint Peter]

Learning Fortran in 1983?

Were you majoring in Computer History?

0....

 

[Byron In Exile]

0

Oh, right... Colorado.

 

[glynndah]

i had a statistic class in college. we used punch cards. this was way back in 1977.


{geezer geek enough for ya?}

 

[Saint Peter]

i had a statistic class in college. we used punch cards. this was way back in 1977.


{geezer geek enough for ya?}

Let Byron know what state you were in so he can be nasty and stuff.

 

[glynndah]

Let Byron know what state you were in so he can be nasty and stuff.

mostly a state of confusion and terror. appointed times for the computer and dire tales of woe if one messed up. other than that, i was in the land o' license plate printing governors -- and still am.

 

[Saint Peter]

mostly a state of confusion and terror. appointed times for the computer and dire tales of woe if one messed up. other than that, i was in the land o' license plate printing governors -- and still am.

My Fortran class was taught by a fresh out of school Phd who was a sexy blond beauty pagent winner and a complete bubble head.

I miss those days.

 

[glynndah]

My Fortran class was taught by a fresh out of school Phd who was a sexy blond beauty pagent winner and a complete bubble head.

I miss those days.

my statistic class was taught by a professor who entertained us with tales of late night grad assistant-type debauchery. i remember one story involving copious amounts of vodka and purina monkey chow.

 

[Byron In Exile]

Let Byron know what state you were in so he can be nasty and stuff.

You got Tebow out of the deal, so stop hanging a lip.

 

[Byron In Exile]

i had a statistic class in college. we used punch cards. this was way back in 1977.

{geezer geek enough for ya?}

Not bad.

Did you have any, like, Teletypes? or Dataphones?

Magnetic tapes?