The Good Old Days of the Internet

[Johnny Pneumatic]

I was just driving along the information super-highway when I found these archives of content from the early days of the internet. Enjoy:

http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest/

And it's mirrored here :

http://www.etext.org/CuD/


If you've got any knowledge of old nerdy stuff like this, or unlike this, share it.

I'm not engaging in nostalgia, because somewhat sadly, I didn't live the internet back in it's early days. First time I was online was in '97.
I'm sure a few here were computer nerds in the 80s and early to mid 90s though. :nerdy:

[Dingfod]

Why, back in my day, we didn't have no stinking internets, we had a couple of tin cans and a string. And we liked it that way.

100 TYPE "PITY THE FOOL THAT MESS WITH MR. T."
110 GOTO 100

[ChuckF]

The "information superhighway" metaphor certainly takes me back a few years.

[Kevlar]

They've got the Internet on computers now!?!
:homer:

[pescifish]

I've been working with computers since late 70s, but they were real computers. You know you can't trust any computer you can actually pick up! I worked with the type of computers referred to as mini-computers. The PC and Macs were in a category called "micro" computers and I didn't deal with a PC until I bought one for my personal use in 1996.

[viscousmemories]

After I got out of rehab (in early '94) I crashed on a friend's couch for a few weeks. He had a student computer network account and a Mac se30 with a 2400bps modem. That was just before the graphical web browser was popular, so I was pretty much all about ftp, gopher and most importantly, telnet. With telnet I could access the lp MUD* "Genesis", which became my obsession for a while. I also used to chat with people on a BBS. For you youngins, a BBS was basically a UNIX server that people would use their modems to dial in and connect to, thus creating an interactive chat environment with the added bonus of tying up your phone line for hours on end.



*A MUD (multi-user dungeon) is a text based roleplaying game. Just yesterday my nephew was chatting me about how much he loves the graphical roleplaying game Runescape, and I was able to use the old "back in my day, we didn't HAVE graphics. We had to use WORDS to roleplay." Which for some reason prompted him to say "borrrrring". I can't imagine why.

[Dingfod]

Talk about "micro" computers. My first hands on experience with a personal computer was my brother-in-law's Atari 800. (http://oldcomputers.net/atari800.html) I spent quite a few hours playing a space video game he had programmed himself. My first PC was a hotrod by comparison, purchased in 1986, a Tandy 1000SX with a whopping 1.024 MB RAM, two 5-1/4" floppy drives and no hard drive.