[Aeropol]

When I first logged on from a text terminal to a multi user UNIX computer connected to the Internet in 1990 there was no WWW, which came 1993-1994. There was telnet, email, FTP, IRC , USENET news groups and some now obsolete protocols for accessing and searching online data from a text terminal.The Internet Movie Database was then a collection of text files and UNIX scripts which you downloaded via FTP to local computer to perform searches.

Just pick a year that seems about right.

[Spiwak]

There should be a "I don't ****ing know!" option.

[Jazhara7]

And forum law dictates that there should be an "other" option.

Sure, it's an unwritten law, but you'll see soon enough what I mean.

To tell you the truth, I am not entirely sure. When I first used the Internet, I was in Primary school, and I hardly got past the start page. I know that I visited Toms Spielewiese when it was really new (the background looked like a grassy lawn, because the name means "Games lawn" and is a kind of joke. A "Spielwiese" is a "Playing Lawn". Later they had a more professional layout with frames, and later an even better layout with locked frames. Now it's called "Gamesmania".). It first went online in 1996.

I also remember that I visited Stan's Previously Owned Homepage (one of the first German Monkey Island fansites), and that it never changed a lot. After years of inactivity, it seems it has died after all - the last news item was that of the confirmation of EMI, with a picture of Guybrush and Mr. Cheese.

Through Stans Home I also found the Scummbar, even though my English was not all that good. The ScummBar looked different back then too, but I can't remember it exactly.

For a long time, I mainly browsed through pages for the game Petz (Petz 3, to be exact, which was published in 1998). My English was a bit better by then, because I had since transferred to my current school (though I was to switch back to the German school for some time, before staying here till now), which has English as the language of instruction. I was able to access pages other than the few German ones.

At one point I also visited the official The Longest Journey page. I remember that it was in 2000 that I was waiting for the game to arrive (it took a long time. It arrived on the last day of school. A wonderful sunny day, on which my mother and I were driving down the Bahnstraße in my street, as my mother had picked me up from school.). I often visited that site, until I finally registered at the forums in 2003, which marked my start of contributing to the Internet.




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[RLacey]

Ooh... well, it involved 28.8k modems and bulletin boards, but I can't remember when it was .

[Gordon Bennett]

My first account was Usenet only, in 1992. All I remember was reading a lot of talk.bizarre and alt.tasteless for some reason. I didn't actually have Internet proper for another year or two afterwards, and even then I didn't know what to do with it until I discovered the semi-web browser Slipknot, which allowed me to access the web with mouse pointer and graphics.

Which, by the way, was not exactly a joy to use at 2400 baud. I found the "James T. Kirk singalong page" once, and clicked the smallest audio sample.

Nothing happened, and eventually I moved on to find more silly things to amuse me online. The Mentos FAQ. The Big Red Button that doesn't do anything. Toilet-cam. Can O' Spam. Justin's Links to the Underground. Paranoia.com. 45 minutes later, having completely forgotten about the Singing Shatner, I was assaulted with a burst of "MISTER TAMBOURIIINE MAAAAAANNN!!" out of my speakers.

Knocked me right off my chair, that did.

[Huz]

My dad bought a baud 1200 modem for his Sinclair QL sometime before 1991 and we connected to local BBS things - I'm not even sure if they had 'internet' access, but if they did it would have been for sporadic email exchange only. It was all about local message boards and local mail, and you certainly couldn't download anything worthwhile at 1200bps.

I remember you could do 'online banking' with it though - some banks had their own text-based, advanced ATM-style systems you could dial into. And so did Argos. To misquote Michael Caine, not a lot of people know that...

While clever, it was all a bit pointless really, so when the modem broke we didn't get back online until BBC science show "Tomorrow's World" started pimping their web site in 1995 or so. We checked it out from the local college and it was all text. Pft!

We got the internet at home soon after getting our first PC, in 1997, and not knowing any better we went for AOL... from being hardcore BBS users to being on AOL was a bit of a comedown really.

[Jazhara7]

Originally Posted by Gordon Bennett

My first account was Usenet only, in 1992. All I remember was reading a lot of talk.bizarre and alt.tasteless for some reason. I didn't actually have Internet proper for another year or two afterwards, and even then I didn't know what to do with it until I discovered the semi-web browser Slipknot, which allowed me to access the web with mouse pointer and graphics.

Which, by the way, was not exactly a joy to use at 2400 baud. I found the "James T. Kirk singalong page" once, and clicked the smallest audio sample.

Nothing happened, and eventually I moved on to find more silly things to amuse me online. The Mentos FAQ. The Big Red Button that doesn't do anything. Toilet-cam. Can O' Spam. Justin's Links to the Underground. Paranoia.com. 45 minutes later, having completely forgotten about the Singing Shatner, I was assaulted with a burst of "MISTER TAMBOURIIINE MAAAAAANNN!!" out of my speakers.

Knocked me right off my chair, that did.

You mean This one?

You should check out the other projects by Stefan. There's one pretty recent one that I also plan to participate in, but I am not sure if I should talk about it here yet. Check out his livejournal (there's a link to it at his website), if you are curious.

I actually found his works through his Neverwinter Nights modules, but all of his stuff is pretty good.


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[pinkgothic]

Hard to say. '96 or '97. But only properly late in '98, because that's when I came to Germany*. Voilá, and the obsession started.

* returned to, technically.

[RLacey]

Where were you before?

[pinkgothic]

South Africa. Land of very, very crappy phonelines. Otherwise awesome all around if I may say so, or at least it was back then...

[Melanie68]

There are a couple of people here on the forums from South Africa - AudioSoldier and Lostwolfe.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Nothing glamorous like pinksie, but I first went online back in 2000 with my first computer. Yeah, it was 56k modem.

[Curt]

Originally Posted by pinkgothic

South Africa. Land of very, very crappy phonelines. Otherwise awesome all around if I may say so, or at least it was back then...

You may say so. I lived there between 1981 and January 1986, finished schooling there and had my first job there too (trainee Draughtsman) and loved many things about the Country (not least the weather - you can set your watch by the afternoon summer rains).

[AFGNCAAP]

I believed it had been 1999, but through a disk search I found compromising evidence which suggest it might have actually been late 1998.

[pinkgothic]

Originally Posted by Curt

You may say so. I lived there between 1981 and January 1986, finished schooling there and had my first job there too (trainee Draughtsman) and loved many things about the Country (not least the weather - you can set your watch by the afternoon summer rains).

That sounds as though you're disagreeing with me? Maybe I wasn't clear enough - I enjoyed every one of those nine years I spent there. I wasn't being sarcastic about my fine print. But I would never have gotten overly interested in the internet over there because the connections kept crapping out. Vast difference to Germany.

[Dasilva]

1998 for me.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Originally Posted by Dasilva

1998 for me.

You were only 13?

AWWWWWWW!!!!

< dies from cuteness overload >

[Melanie68]

Originally Posted by pinkgothic

That sounds as though you're disagreeing with me? Maybe I wasn't clear enough - I enjoyed every one of those nine years I spent there. I wasn't being sarcastic about my fine print. But I would never have gotten overly interested in the internet over there because the connections kept crapping out. Vast difference to Germany.

I think he was agreeing with you.

You said this:

Originally Posted by pinkgothic

Otherwise awesome all around if I may say so, or at least it was back then...

Then he said this:

Originally Posted by Curt

You may say so.

[pinkgothic]

Hm, it struck me as, I guess, distancing. You know, like, "You may say so. I say this:". Ah well. Either well, I felt better clarifying.

[Iguana]

I can't remember when I started either it was a really really long time ago early elementary school for sure. I remember visting all the kiddy sites, there was some story you could read online that updated everyweek and there was this microphone guy in the corner and there was also some sort of educational type choose your own adventure type game where you were this bear detective and you were solving some case something to do with a convenience store, I remember getting stuck at the DNA puzzle cause well at that age I had no idea what DNA was.
But yes I was addicted to the internet by like 7, it was great!!