Describe your first computer and your earliest online experiences

Started by berberry, June 27, 2017, 05:44:21 PM

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berberry

I thought this might be a fun topic for those of us who've been using computers for a decade or more. I bought my first PC in 1989 and spent a fortune on it. I worked in the industry at the time, and was able to take advantage of some promotional prices on parts that weren't available to the general public. For about $2800, I built myself a 386DX-33 with 4MB of RAM, Soundblaster, 512k Paradise SVGA graphics card and a 14-inch VGA monitor that I soon replaced with a 15-inch that sported a 72 Hz refresh rate, a rare feature in those days which allowed users to sit in front of the screen for a much longer period of time without getting a headache. I kept that machine for years, from MS-Dos 3.3 to 6.2 and from Windows/386 to WfW 3.11. Soon after MS-Dos 5 was released I bought QEMM386, which provided a lot of enhancements if you had more than the native DOS limit of 640k RAM. When Windows 95 was released, I sold this first machine and bought a newer one. By that time I had upgraded the RAM to 16 MB, the SVGA to a Tseng Labs ET-4000 and had added a second hard drive with 330 MB and a 4x CD-Rom drive.

My first online experience was at work, where the company I worked for provided technical support and hardware maintenance on PCs, Novel Networks and Unix/Xenix machines for small, mostly rural telephone companies. We would dial in to customers' machines to make configuration changes and fixes, usually at 1200 to 2400 bps connection speeds. After I bought my PC I bought a 2400 bps modem and started dialing up local BBS systems. Before long I'd discovered a money pit called Compu$erve and sold my pathetic little 2400 bps modem and found a deal on a v.32 9600 bps modem, capable of connecting to CompuServe at the fastest possible speed, a speed which carried connection charges of $22 an hour and required a long-distance call to Columbus, Ohio. Most other cities had only 2400 bps local connections available in the early days.

In order to take best advantage of the fast connection speeds, you'd use automated software that would connect to CompuServe, download all the message board posts you've previously flagged, with comments, download headings for all new posts plus catalog listings for new files made available since your last connection, then immediately disconnect. You'd go through all the information on a forum like this one offline (and there was a forum somewhat like this, about roads and highways and state DOTs) and type any responses or new topics you want to post, plus select for download any files you want from the forum libraries and set the software to make a second pass. It would connect, carry out your commands and immediately disconnect again. For the second time you would go through the information, and so you would continue until you were done for the day. I used a program called TAPCis for the automated routines, and eventually converted to a more robust and colorful program called OzCis which was released only in the final years before the internet and its world wide web became available. CompuServe's forums were made obsolete, and the service became an ISP. At some point they were purchased by AOL.

I think back on how much all that money I spent would be worth today and I don't bat an eye. It was worth it. I'd do it again.


froggie

My first online experience actually predates my first computer.  I recall from grade school (1986-ish) our class using a very old school modem (that required placing the phone receiver into some sort of device) to log into some place.

We bought our first computer in 1991....a 386SX/16MHz running DOS 5.0 (and eventually Windows 3.1).  By the end of that year, I was logging into Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) using Boyan 5.0.  In 1993, we started using Prodigy online.

My first experience with the Internet as we know it was in 1996 when I came home on leave.  A friend of mine had a dial-up ISP and he let me play around.  I recall MnDOT's website was one of the first I looked at.

MNHighwayMan

Quote from: froggie on June 27, 2017, 05:58:02 PM
My first experience with the Internet as we know it was in 1996 when I came home on leave.  A friend of mine had a dial-up ISP and he let me play around.  I recall MnDOT's website was one of the first I looked at.

:-D That's excellent.

In case anyone was wondering what it looked like back then: http://web.archive.org/web/19970404053920/http://dot.state.mn.us

The US-61 favicon is a nice touch.

berberry

Quote from: froggie on June 27, 2017, 05:58:02 PM
My first experience with the Internet as we know it was in 1996 when I came home on leave.  A friend of mine had a dial-up ISP and he let me play around.  I recall MnDOT's website was one of the first I looked at.


I remember searching for Mississippi's DOT pretty early on as well. I remember we had someone from inside the department who would post on that CompuServe highway forum I mentioned. When the web became available, as I recall MDOT took advantage of it pretty early on, with a website dedicated to the I-55, I-20, US-49 interchange reconstruction project, or as it is mistakenly referred to, "the stack". Updates were provided fairly often, saying when crews would be working on what and at which location in the project zone. I remember thinking they were doing a pretty good job with it compared to the DOTs of neighboring states, where in some cases larger projects were underway with little or no information being released on the internet.

Mississippi didn't keep up the great work for the entire time since. For a few years the webpage seemed to languish. Today I would say it is passable but uninspired. You can find useful information on it, but the software is out-of-date and clunky.

Takumi

My first computer was something outdated in the early 90s. I'd already owned an NES and Super Nintendo by then. My first online experience came around 1994. I distinctly remember saying the internet was overrated. Oops.
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epzik8

My first computer was a Windows 98 Packard Bell machine with Intel Celeron processor purchased in the spring of 1999. We connected it to the Internet shortly after getting it. Since I was 4 years old, we went on a kid-friendly desktop mode featured on the computer and clicked on a webpage marked KiddoNet. This was either IE4 or 5. There was a bunch of games and fun stuff on the site. It was accompanied by MIDI music pieces. Our Packard Bell also had a Navigator Assistant thing, a flight simulator called Fighter Ace, the Windows 98 desktop themes and so much more. I would go on the screensaver menu just to watch the 3D Maze and Flying Windows.

Around the same time, my father's parents got a Windows 98 Compaq machine. When I was about 5, I went to the sounds menu on Control Panel and changed all of the preset system sounds. Not only that, but I also added sounds to system events not normally accompanied by sounds. My grandparents logged onto the computer later and got so confused. I was laughing.
From the land of red, white, yellow and black.
____________________________

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Duke87

My mom had an old Atari from the late 80's. I don't know the exact model number but I know it lacked a hard drive, relying entirely on 3.5" floppies to store everything. I want to say it had 1 MB of RAM. But yeah there was a computer in my household that was about as old as I was when I was little.

We first got the internet in 1995. Browser was Mosaic. The thing I most distinctly remember was watching the images slowly load onto the screen line by line and going "ooooooohhh".
If you always take the same road, you will never see anything new.

corco

My parents were into technology when I was young - my mom actually majored in Computer Science back in 1980, and she worked from home once I was born. Because of this, my earliest memories are of her Toshiba laptop in 1991-1992, a giant thing with a tiny screen and DOS. She had Lotus 1-2-3 installed on the thing, and I was a pretty smart kid so she was able to teach me to do very simple addition/subtraction/multiplication on Lotus 1-2-3, and I'd spend hours doing that. She'd write out a list of 20-30 math problems, I'd go over to the computer, punch them in one by one, and bring them back to her.

Here's a picture of me on said computer in 1991 or so with my list of math problems next to me:


I remember that what are now drop down menus would take the full screen, and I remember getting into those and wasn't really smart enough to understand what those did at that point.

Towards the end, we also got a Snoopy computer game on that old DOS machine which was pretty rad.

Shortly after that, my Dad got his first work laptop (a Compaq, I believe) and it had Windows 3.1 on it, and shortly after that we realized what we were missing and got our first family desktop computer which was an NEC Ready with a 486 and Microsoft Office 2.0 on it in 1993.

We got the internet in 1998, after we replaced the NEC with a brand new 1997 IBM Aptiva with a 200 MHz Pentium and Windows 95. That computer sucked, but I remember logging into AOL 3.0, using phone number 208-322-8400. Because I was really into cars at that time, and had a 1998 Automobile Magazine New Car Buying Guide with every car manufacturer's website on it, I promptly went to all their websites. At that time, you could request car brochures from the manufacturers that were the real full color brochures like the ones that you could get from the dealer, and I requested every brochure under the sun. This was nice, because that before I'd have to drag my Dad to car dealerships, and he refused to go to anything but a Ford/GM/Chrysler dealer, so I got to get brochures from foreign cars for the first time (with the exception of foreign cars sold at whatever dealer we'd get our Oldsmobiles/Fords serviced at).

I used Microsoft's Carpoint website a lot too, because it had debuted 360 degree views of car interiors at that time, which was the bee's knees.


jp the roadgeek

The first computer I ever used (didn't own it) was the Apple II when I was in 2nd grade.  The memories of BASIC and LOGO programming languages are forever engrained in me; BASIC and its for/next loops, and LOGO for the little "turtle" that you tell to go forward, turn, and create a shaped path.

The first computer I ever owned was one my dad bought: a Compaq 8088 with dual 5 1/4" floppy drives, a little 2" monochrome monitor, and a connected 4 color monitor.  We had a hard drive (probably about 2 MB) installed separately, plus we had a dot matrix printer that printed a page every 4 minutes.  Eventually, we got a 2400 baud dialup modem which was about the size of today's modem, but required having to plug into the phone jack when needed.  The first experience I had with remote reception was not as a dialup internet service, but as a dialup bulletin board service (BBS).  Naturally, graphics were extremely crude, with illustrations made from strategically placed letters and numbers.  The worst was that schools used Apple computers but I had a PC at home, so any schoolwork other than a paper required that I use the computer lab at school rather than any home computer.

Here is a pic of what it looked like:

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1995hoo

The first computer I used regularly (not counting some POS Atari 400 and 800 units in grammar school when we were supposed to become "computer literate" doing programming using the asinine PILOT programming language) was in 1987 when, at my mom's insistence, my father finally accepted that their ancient manual typewriter was not an acceptable way for me to type papers in high school. He got an IBM PS/2 Model 30 with an 8086 processor (I do not recall processor speed), 640 KB RAM, and two 3.5-inch floppy drives that could only handle 720 KB disks (not 1.44 MB). No hard drive. He felt we didn't "need" one. We ran DOS 3.3.

I remember running dBase III Plus on that Model 30 to keep track of my record/tape/CD collection.

The first PC I had of my own was an NEC my parents got for me four years later when I went off to college. It had a 16-MHz 386SX, 2 MB RAM, and a 40 MB hard drive. I went through multiple versions of DOS on there, at one point even switching to DR DOS (I forget the version number).

That NEC originally had a 2400-baud modem and it was with that modem that I first experienced the Internet, though of course it was nothing like what we know today. I used it constantly to dial into UVA's servers, all of which were UNIX-based. Most of that was for e-mail and USENET access, but I also used various other universities' online library catalogues when the book I needed at UVA was checked out and I had an upcoming due date (and then I made a road trip to Sweet Briar College). I upgraded that modem to a 14,400 in 1993 or 1994. Back then I tinkered with my computer a lot and the cover was usually not screwed into place except at the end of the semester when I hauled it home.

First time I remember regularly seeing the World Wide Web was in the fall of 1995 when I was at Duke. I had seen it a few times during my fourth year at UVA in the computer labs (accessing it via my NEC with the modem wasn't happening), but I spent a lot more time using the library computers at Duke, and by then I had a laptop with an Ethernet card that allowed me broadband access from my on-campus apartment. That was the fall when the NMSL repeal was pending and I remember the Reasonable Drivers Unanimous site had a daily update I checked every day wondering when it would finally happen.
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commenting on the Capitals clinching a playoff spot.

"That sounded stupid, didn't it?"
—Kolzig, to the same reporter a few seconds later.

noelbotevera

Now since I'm a latecomer, my first memory of using a computer was in 2008 or so. We owned a "Systemax" piece of junk and a bulky 16 (I think) inch CRT that was agonizing to use up until 2011, when we got those Macintosh computers (yeah, we bought a Mac, kill me). I don't recall the specs of the machine, but what I do recall is that it buffered when you tried to load things like YouTube, and it ran Windows XP (which I used during kindergarten). I later learned the reason why it ran so slowly is because the thing was already 4+ years old at that point, and it sorely needed replacing. I can't find the computer and its peripherals now, since my aunt moved in, but if I do find it I'll revise this post if I can plug that thing in.

I also found an old keyboard and mouse dating to (at least) the mid to late '90s (after cleaning out a closet) that went with a previous computer that I'm aware of, dating to 1994. I just know this because my dad starting writing articles then.

So since I don't have memories of those, I can tell you the specs of "my" current computers. The MacBook Pro that I'm typing this post on is from early 2011 and has a 13" screen, with a native resolution of 1280 by 800. The CPU is a 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5 (obviously a previous generation, probably a Sandy Bridge or Westmere architecture), and it has 4 GB of DDR3, 1333 MHz, RAM. It's also using its onboard graphics chip (hurrah for CPUs having onboard graphics!), and a 320 GB, 5400 RPM hard drive (HDD of course). For loading software and such, it comes with a slot-loading (basically there's no CD/DVD tray) "Super Drive", which means it can load a DVD and a CD (but not at the same time), a FireWire 800 port, a Thunderbolt port, and two USB 2.0 ports.

Of course, I connect to the Internet using WiFi and not a dialup modem (I probably should try dialup at one point just to see what I can do with it).

I also have a desktop (iMac) that's a mid 2011 model, with a 27" screen, with a native resolution of 2560 by 1440 display. It's basically a more powerful version of this thing with a keyboard and mouse, so I won't bore people with specs.

Max Rockatansky

#11
The first time I used any kind of online net was when Prodigy rolled out regional service in 1988.  My Dad was actually a marketing guy at Prodigy and despite us not being in one of the covered regions he had access at his office.  The service went nation wide in 1990 and really from there I always had access in one form or the other afterwards to some kind of online provider.  I remember the dial modem, tying up the phone lines, DOS graphics based message boards, and even subscriptions having limited minutes.

IBM was a big player in the whole Prodigy venture with Sears and provided my Dad with some home office computers to use.  I used to jack up his track paper just to mess with him when he was printing out documents....in retrospect that was probably pretty expensive.  :rolleyes:  Most of my early computer experience was on the Apple II learning to type or playing games like Oregon Trail or Kings Quest I.  Really the oddity is that as early as that all sounds I'm not as old as it may seem.  But the thing was that really in those days a lot of the online stuff we see today was more or less just a gimmick and that being the case it is strange to explain why I don't really care all that much about tech stuff today.

jeffandnicole

We had the Apple IIe at home, since that's what was used in schools at the time.  The first time I was actually online was probably when I was a senior in high school or a freshman in college.  I quickly created my home webpage, having learned html by just looking at other sites at the time, all of which were in their infancy.  I used a local dialup at home, jersey.net, staying away from AOL and Prodigy.  My boss at the bowling center where I worked was addicted to Prodigy though.  Remember at the time, you got so many hours for a monthly fee, then had to pay per hour after that.  He was racking up $300 bills each month just by playing on the internet!

hotdogPi

Clinched, minus I-93 (I'm missing a few miles and my file is incorrect)

Traveled, plus US 13, 44, and 50, and several state routes

I will be in Burlington VT for the eclipse.

MikeTheActuary

My first computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer (first generation).  We eventually got a 300 baud acoustic coupler modem, and I got to play on some local dialup BBS's....albeit not very successfully, because our landline sucked. 

(The landline was still very noisy when we turned it off in that house last year.)

US 81

That was it!  My first was also a TRS-80, tape drive - it was awful, so prone to failure.

My first internet experiences were in some computer lab in college in the 1980's - it seemed like much ado about nothing. I vaguely remember dial-up and my first modem - with a cradle that you set the phone hand-set into... still pretty troublesome. 

Oh how things have changed.....

JJBers

I had a HP Windows 98 computer as my first, and my earliest online experience that I can remember was 2008, when I was on PBSkids.com...I also remember watching YouTube for the first time in 2009.
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hotdogPi

I remember discovering online flash games on March 31, 2004. (I didn't notice any April Fools jokes the next day. I must have just missed them.)

I'm not sure what flash games would have existed in 2004, though...
Clinched, minus I-93 (I'm missing a few miles and my file is incorrect)

Traveled, plus US 13, 44, and 50, and several state routes

I will be in Burlington VT for the eclipse.

jeffandnicole

Quote from: US 81 on June 28, 2017, 09:25:49 AM
My first internet experiences were in some computer lab in college in the 1980's - it seemed like much ado about nothing. I vaguely remember dial-up and my first modem - with a cradle that you set the phone hand-set into... still pretty troublesome. 

The year after I started college, incoming freshmen had a semester computer class simply on how to use the internet.  One of the big talks was how one of the websites they were to visit was the Jack Daniels website, especially as most of them were underage.  No silly age verification thing then!

froggie

Quote from: MikeThe ActuaryWe eventually got a 300 baud acoustic coupler modem

Quote from: US 81and my first modem - with a cradle that you set the phone hand-set into...

This very old modem type is what I was referring to in my initial response about my first "online" experience:

Quote from: froggieMy first online experience actually predates my first computer.  I recall from grade school (1986-ish) our class using a very old school modem (that required placing the phone receiver into some sort of device) to log into some place.

hbelkins

I come from a print journalism background. I changed jobs in the fall of 1987. The paper I left still set type on the old Compugraphic phototypesetting machines. Desktop publishing was just becoming in vogue and the paper to which I went was on the cutting edge. The first computer I ever used was a Mac Plus with 1 MB of RAM and a 20 MB external hard drive. The biggest and best computer in the place was a Mac Plus with 2 MB of RAM and a 40 MB external hard drive. The rest of the computers were Mac 512s and everything was connected by PhoneNet cables.

We had a modem that we could use to dial into various sources, including an Associated Press service for weekly papers and the Kentucky Press Association's BBS.

One day, my publisher came into my office and handed me something he got in the mail, and asked me if it was anything that we could make use of. I checked it out thoroughly and said I could not see anything that would benefit us. What he'd handed me was a free trial AOL disc. Boy, did I ever blow that one!

My first personal computer was a Mac Performa 467. It came pre-loaded with a bunch of software, including the previously mentioned AOL. At that time you had to dial in to a long-distance number in Lexington to log onto AOL. Lexington was about the most expensive place in Kentucky to call so needless to say, I didn't go online very often. This was about the time that AOL started offering full Internet access, including Usenet.

I went to work for the agency formerly known as the Kentucky Revenue Cabinet in 1995 and state government was just getting into having an online presence. I was tasked with helping develop Revenue's website, mostly from a content perspective since I had no techie experience. I was one of the few individuals in the agency who was given Internet access because of that, and I stumbled upon a Usenet group called misc.transport.road. We all know where that went...


Government would be tolerable if not for politicians and bureaucrats.

briantroutman

My first hands-on computer experience was likely in first grade. Nearly every classroom in my elementary school (except the kindergarten, art, and music rooms) was outfitted with a couple of Apple IIe computers (a few had IIGSes). By the time I left elementary school in 1995, the classrooms still had those decade-old Apples, despite our district being relatively wealthy by central PA standards.

That was about the time that my family got its first home computer–after years of my siblings and me begging our parents. My closest friend had recently gotten a Macintosh Performa 6110 (a.k.a. Power Macintosh 6100) and despite my conversion to his religion, my ultra frugal dad bought a cheap AST computer running Windows 95. I had various PC-using friends on CompuServe, Prodigy, and direct dial-up ISPs, but we followed my Mac friend's lead and signed up with America Online–which was my first online/Internet experience.

Still miffed over my dad's decision to buy a cheap PC, I put my little-kid dollars together and bought a nearly decade-old Macintosh SE. Eventually, I got that tiny old machine connected to the Internet using Mosaic as a web browser. I gradually worked my way forward through Mac history with an LC, a Centris, and a Quadra before finally getting a paying job as a teenager and buying a new iMac DV with the proceeds.

Considering that I now make my living with a Mac as a graphic designer, I'd say the influence of my Mac friend (and my friend's influence from a Mac evangelist friend of the family) was pivotal to where I am today.

SP Cook

When I was in college, I had an Atari 800, which was better than a typewriter, which is what most people had.  That or you paid people to type your papers.  Mostly that and playing better versions of Atari VCS games was about all it was good for. 

I took a class in polling and the entire university (14K students back then) had exactly 8 computers for students to use.  Had acousic modems.  We would meet the professor at the lab late at night (because the mainframe was at another school and there was this thing called long distance) and work with poll data from a 20 year old election.  You had to do your sets and then go back in the morning and see if it had worked, which is often did not. 

Later, in grad school, I got an IBM clone and there was this guy who went to Michigan undergrad and he was showing me this BB service.   All it was was a bunch of Michigan, Michigan State, and Notre Dame fans saying each other sucked.  I saw little point in it.   Again I mostly just wrote papers on it. 

After I got out of school, I had no need for a personally owned computer and the IBM just sat in the garage for years.  I was broke and had neither the time nor money to bother with stuff.  Always had a computer at work.  Missed the roll out of Windows and all of that.  Finally gave in and bought another PC with a phone modem.  Came with Prodigy, which was kinda fun until it got outdated. 

7/8

I grew up with computers (born in 1995), and I remember really enjoying Roller Coaster tycoon! I didn't surf on the internet too often,  since dial-up was painfully slow and my parents wanted to leave the landline open for phone calls. We got a Bell modem for WiFi around Grade 6, but it was still really slow. I didn't really start using the internet regularly until high school.

Most of my internet use during elementary school (Grade 1 to 8) was on iMac G3's in the library:


I don't remember what kind of PC I had in my house growing up, but it had that classic 90's off-white colour, and floppy disks of course :-D. I think it ran Windows 98. It's cool how much computers have changed within my lifetime.

Edit: I had a cool flash of nostalgia at my second co-op job (in 2015) when I had work with a laptop running Windows 95 and it required transfering the data through floppy disks! I only had to use it once a month; my regular computer at work was more up-to-date thankfully :-D.

HazMatt

My first computer was some custom built garbage from someone my grandparents knew.  It ran Windows 95 fine but had no disk space because 'it was unnecessary'.  I remember having to uninstall Internet Explorer any time I wanted to play certain games.  Probably a blessing in disguise because I kept tinkering/upgrading the thing and learned about computers in the process.  Earliest online experiences were playing games or messing around on Mapquest in the school library.



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