First internets experience?

[redwill]

Some of us are older than some others of us ...

What was your first internets experience? I have two, depending on the definition:

When I was at YSU in the late '80s, students could go over to Meshel Hall and flip through a binder of printouts of available programs. If there was a program you wanted, you could bring in a floppy, leave it there, and retrieve it a day or so later after they had downloaded it. I got "The Golden Wombat of Destiny" (text adventure game) that way.

My first personal experience was in grad school here in Kansas. On the university net with a 2400 baud modem, I was first able to connect to the library at the University of Illinois. The establishment of that first connection was pure ecstasy. Imagine! Sitting in the privacy of my dorm room on my new Packard Bell PC (recently bought from Wal-Mart) and browsing the stacks of a university hundreds of miles away! Revelatory!

[Rylan]

Redwill played with the internet before I was conceived

That is weird.

[redwill]

I shudder to think what EPP or Geezer were doing before I was conceived.

[Rylan]

I shudder to think what EPP or Geezer were doing before I was conceived.

[shafnutz05]

Lol

[Pavel Bure]

e-mailing Shaq from AOL at a friends house. We had no idea what the "internet" was. The Shaq thing was something to do with AOL kids. We told him he was terrible and couldn't shoot foul shots.

[FreeCandy44]

I was 16 in 1996 when I saw people searching on something called yahoo! At my high school library. I was in 10th grade. Thank you for making me feel old LOL. I remember frequenting alt groups. I was very fond of alt.music.misfits.

[canaan]

I rocked the imagination network for a while for games like euchre, and spent a lot of time using hacker progs like exorcist on AOL. Distinctly remember being super pumped when we upgraded the family comp to 28.8

[columbia]

Campus email and bs-ing on an alt.music group as a freshman in college.
I exchanged email addresses with a friend over Christmas break (who had gone to another college). That seemed very strange at the time.

[redwill]

I should mention that, after connecting to the U of Ill library, my next order of business was to find a BBS with photos of Cindy Crawford topless. I succeeded, but got a virus which plastered my Packard Bell.

[tifosi77]

The first Internetting I can recall doing was my freshman year at Penn State in '91. Iirc, PSU was the first state U to issue email addresses to every student, and some of my profs required us to submit papers and stuff electronically. (my addy was mas222@psu.edu)

[redwill]

(my addy was mas222@psu.edu)

Was that your choice? Kansas State actually let us choose our username. Those were the days. Mine was "fetish." So I was something like fetish@bitnet.blahblah.edu

[columbia]

That explains quite a bit.

[Chefpatrick871]

Youngstown Freenet. Woot woot. IRC!

[viva la ben]

I used to telnet into a bbs

[FreeCandy44]

Loved irc

[JS©]

AOL 3.0 installed on a AMD 166 in the mid 90s. I think I still have that parts of that computer in pieces in storage.

[Rylan]

Journey's End Dial up was what my parents had.

[ajh2298]

My wife who I might have been seeing for a few weeks at the time taking me to the library to look up hints on how to get pass this one puzzle I was stuck on in Silent Hill on the PS1.

[blackjack68]

Probably some pron site.

[CERV96]

Probably some pron site.

[Gabe]

back in 91-ish, We got a 386 Packard Bell with a 2800 baud modem from JCPenney. With it, we got a free 100 minutes of Prodigy service. I logged into the JCPenney catalog and it was boring.

[blackjack68]

back in 91-ish, We got a 386 Packard Bell with a 2800 baud modem from JCPenney. With it, we got a free 100 minutes of Prodigy service. I logged into the JCPenney catalog and it was boring. :)

Guess you didn't go to the Bra section.

[pittsoccer33]

i remember sending instant messages at the old buhl planetarium/science center in the late 80s.

in 91 or 92 we bought a tandy 1000rl and had pc link from aol. that lasted about a month - between long distance charges and per minute internet charges it was ridiculous.

in late 96 we got aol on a 166mhz first generation pentium. it was a month or two before the great aol blackouts of early 97.

[count2infinity]

all I really remember is the dial up and thinking, "wtf is that?"