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When did you discover the internet and other old things you remember ?

Grandpa Frank

先輩
21 May 2003
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I was thinking back to my first computer , a Commodore 64 I bought in 1982. My whole system cost about $2000 back then. I got interested in computers while using them in the Navy in 1970. Around 1985 , I could connect to a form of internet called Q-Link using a modem you hooked to your phone line. Writing a small program back then might take a few days using basic language. By todays standards it would seem like driving on the interstate highway while doing about 3 miles per hour , really slow back then.
When did you first get a computer and find the internet ? Seems hard to believe I've been hooked on computing for over 30 years.
 
Early 1980s I was involved in running a BBS called Arbornet. We had, I think, 12 modems for dialing in, and a couple hundred users max. We ran it on an Altos 68000 using UNIX (a Berkeley variant, I think).

I remember long nights of doing tape backups...

Edit: I had a computer shortly before that, an Apple of some sort. I don't remember too much of it.
 
Pretty late in fact. A C64 in the late 80s, the first email at university in 1995, a dial-up modem at home in 1996, and the first website in 1998. I miss those days of Windows 3.11, Netscape 4, and Altavista.

Pretty nerdy topic, @Uncle Frank ! :D
 
I guess I have only been using the internet since I was about 8. Luckily because of my age the internet was very well established and easily accessible at the school I went to. I used to moderate chatrooms for a long while which gave me an insight into HTML - of which I developed further when I started designing websites. I couldn't tell you what my first computer was, just a hand-me-down from my father. I admire anyone that can excel in programming.
 
I used pasokon tsūshin (lit. personal computer communication, similar to CompuServe) in the early 90's, before the internet spread in Japan. I, too, used a modem at that time, as Frank-san mentioned.
 
I'm probably a lot younger than everyone else who has posted on here so far, but I have had access to the Internet for most of if not my entire life. Granted, the majority of my early years included going to bookmarked pages like PBSKids (fantastic educational site, by the way) and just playing educational games on our PC, but as time went on, it turned out that I was way ahead of my peers when it came time to learn how to use the basics of the Microsoft Suite programs. It's hilarious to think that I picked up so much just from trying to imagine chat rooms, write stories, present ideas, and draw pictures in a new way. At the same time, it's probably weird for a lot of people to imagine what it's like for my generation to have quite literally grown up with technology and have it change constantly. I remember when we got our first CD player and how it coexisted with our VCR, and now everything is available through streaming. I can't even remember the last time we used our Blu-Ray player, and I'm pretty sure we've only had it about 2-3 years. I also vaguely remember a time when cell phones fit into the palm of my hand, and now they're all like min-tablet. Speaking of tablets, anyone else remember PDAs? I was given my mom's when she got her first smartphone, but both of those devices are nearly obsolete when compared to the technology of ten years later. Such a weird world we all live in.

I probably got a little sidetracked, but hopefully this contributes to a wider discussion of some sort f^-^')
 
OldPhone.jpg This is the type of phone I first used at my grandmother's house around 1954 or 55. Not long after , they updated it.
 
View attachment 22472 This is the type of phone I first used at my grandmother's house around 1954 or 55. Not long after , they updated it.
OK, Frank, now you're just bragging. :p

I was thinking back to my first computer , a Commodore 64 I bought in 1982. My whole system cost about $2000 back then.
Mine was the same timeframe but it was the Commodore VIC-20. It turned out to be a good investment by my dad. We didn't have money to spend on buying games for it so I ended up programming my own. So it put me far ahead of my peers with regards to computers and I ended up getting a degree in Computer Science and programming for a living which is, incidentally how I ended up in Japan in the 1990s. (I haven't touched code professionally in over a decade now though.) So Japan is really where I first started using the Internet in a form similar to how we know it today as opposed to the BBS / Prodigy type services.

In Japan, I did most of my work on a Sun workstation. The company was spending Y30,000/month just so I could have ISDN (Internet) in my apartment and I carried a PoKeBeru (pager) like a doctor except my patients were the servers back in the office which would alert me automatically if the nightly Nikkei or other data uploads abended.
 
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Gosh, I can remember feeding punch cards thru machines back at the U of ILL in late '71.

But I left that, and didn't get back there till the mid/late 70s in linguistics. Met and had a class with Robert Lees, and then some computational linguistics people, but I don't think I really experienced the modern modem mating call till '89-90, here in Japan.
 
OldTV.jpg I'm feeling old this week , LOL. My first TV was a black & white only with about a 10 inch screen. We had only 3 channels , 6,8,& 13 . They all shut off at midnight and came on around 8AM. They came with rabbit ear antennas that you spent hours adjusting , trying to get a better picture. We often put balls of tinfoil in the antenna we moved up and down trying to get rid of the "snowy" pictures. We got our first TV around 1954 and did not get a color TV till the late 60's.
 
I remember sitting at an IBM machine typing punch cards to feed info into the big mainframe. You could only fit about 25 to 50 words on a card. You typed the same info twice so if you made a mistake , it would catch it when the two entries did not make a perfect match. Some machines had great big round magnets that weighed a ton and some used big floppy disks. My first Navy computer was programed by flipping toggle switches a certain way and then feeding a long punched tape into it and praying it would work. It gave off tons of heat and when it was cold , we took naps behind it and stayed toasty warm. Often our work spaces were over 100 degrees F from all the heat given off during the summer months. The good ol days , LOL.
 
This is the chit chat section and I'm in a reminisce about the good old days of life and electronics mood , so feel free to talk about anything here in this thread. Feel free to even talk about your first vehicle or first kitchen appliance or whatever. Think of my thread as the wild west where anything goes , LOL.
I changed the title to make it more open to old memories.
 
Can't remember what kind of computer, but must have been early 90's . big floppy disks we used to play "games".

The internet must have been a few years after when I went to Amsterdam university, and could check the ajax football club website.

Regarding TV, I remember trying to search the channels and found a porn channel... Full of snow, so had to adjust the whole time... Guys u can imagine....
 
When my older sister was able to change the channel my parents got rid of the tv. That was about when I was born so I didn't really see tv until I was around 10 or 12 at a friends house. We grew up out in the middle of nowhere, so it was a good few mile bike ride to see Saturday morning cartoons. Worth it.
 
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