Teens of today react to the internet of the 90s...

[Edwin]

Reminds you just how far we've come!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0mg9DxvfZE

 

[iamrofe]

Reminds you just how far we've come!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0mg9DxvfZE

Blimey! I'm 24, so 5+ years older than some of those in the vid. I just about remember the noise you'd get when connecting with the modem. Probably the last generation to do so.

Learnt a few things from that vid myself haha.

 

[Edwin]

Ah, I've been online since 1993 (I remember the pre-graphical browser era of Gopher, Veronica and Jughead) so it was very much a blast from the past. Later (not that much later) fiddling with Winsock configurations to try and get dial-up running again was a regular occurrence. And that howl of static is so, so familiar!

 

[Alien]

My first modem was 2400 bauds per second (early 90's), I heard every connection communication. Speedy then!

When I got a 28.8K, that was real progress - and then much later a 64K ISDN line - wowee stuff!

 

[Edwin]

It may be my memory playing tricks but didn't ZX Spectrum and/or Commodore 64 games make a similar "burst of static" noise when loading from tape? It would certainly make sense if they did, since presumably the process (handshake followed by data) isn't that dissimilar...

 

[Alien]

It may be my memory playing tricks but didn't ZX Spectrum and/or Commodore 64 games make a similar "burst of static" noise when loading from tape? It would certainly make sense if they did, since presumably the process (handshake followed by data) isn't that dissimilar...

Yes, they did - I remember the hours of loading a game, then only for it to fail on the last little bit.....

Hours of programming my dad's ZX81 to get a text based game, cool!

 

[Edwin]

When I got a 28.8K, that was real progress - and then much later a 64K ISDN line - wowee stuff!

I used to spend £300-£400 a month around 1996-1998 on dialup because you used to have to pay by the minute for the phone connection (this was in Tokyo - I'm guessing it may have been the same in the UK) and I was glued to it for hours every day (hard to believe, I know!)

 

[Alien]

I used to spend £300-£400 a month around 1996-1998 on dialup because you used to have to pay by the minute for the phone connection (this was in Tokyo - I'm guessing it may have been the same in the UK) and I was glued to it for hours every day (hard to believe, I know!)

Very pricey wasn't it! Eeek.

I used Compuserve in the early days, they cost a fortune!

 

[Edwin]

Yes, they did - I remember the hours of loading a game, then only for it to fail on the last little bit.....

Thanks for confirming that. Sometimes the memory plays tricks. And yes, there was nothing more frustrating than spending 30-45 minutes or more waiting for a game to load only to have it flake out just before the end (it always seemed to happen just before the end too)

For the youngsters: we're really talking "minutes" and indeed "hours" - "seconds" didn't come into the picture in the early years of personal computing...

 

[Murray]

Technology may change, but kids from every generation are really f'king annoying.

 

[Edwin]

Very pricey wasn't it! Eeek.

I used Compuserve in the early days, they cost a fortune!

I think it was about 10p equivalent per minute times a couple of hours a day. I remember the feeling of awe the first time I was able to switch to a flat fee connection and relieve my wallet.

 

[Alien]

Lovely! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fYFsBRVC8Y

 

[ian]

Technology may change, but kids from every generation are really f'king annoying.

Agreed, kids are getting stupider as a result!

 

[timter51]

I used to spend £300-£400 a month around 1996-1998 on dialup because you used to have to pay by the minute for the phone connection (this was in Tokyo - I'm guessing it may have been the same in the UK) and I was glued to it for hours every day (hard to believe, I know!)

I remember playing Duke Nukem 3D direct over dial-up where you had to get it to "call" your mate, and his modem / PC would "accept" the call. Racked up a monster bill one month and that was the end of that!

We started out on Compuserve as well, must have been around 94 or 95. Our email address was something like [email protected] haha

The jump from 56k dial-up to 512kbps ADSL was incredible, particularity the drop in ping for Counterstrike It was fun being a LPB for once.

 

[aZooZa]

Kids in that video don't exhibit much intelligence. But they don't really need to bother about HOW the internet works. To them, it's just like turning on the TV. In the same vein, not many kids knew how a TV worked when I was a kid. I guess it was late 80's for my first exposure to external networks - C64 with 300 baud modem and BBS's etc.

 

[monaghan]

300 baud modem and BBS's etc.

Now you're talking If you found the right BBS's you could get Internet emails as a few of the early ones would have the occasional nodes that had Internet connection. You used to get all sorts of people on there some like Peter Norton who went on to be come quite famous!

Back in the mid 80's we managed to get the company to agree to dedicating a couple of extensions to modems, a pair of Pace 2400 baud modems and a pair of 8086 PC's networked and we were able to run our own BBS to provide technical support for the PC clones we produced. We even supported zmodem and all the other new goodies.

As for all that whistling, it only took a very minor change to the dial string to include an M0 to mute the speaker

 

[mat]

When I was a teen the internet and mobile phones etc were creeping in as the norm. It was still a big deal to be one of the kids at school who had a mobile phone (payasyougo) or the internet at home.

My parents were not very keen on embracing new technology, I had to stay behind after school to use their internet, but I remember being fascinated by it right away, playing around with website building sites like geocities, moonfruit and learning how to shorten your websites address with free redirect domains like "cjb.net" and eventually ".tk"

By the time I convinced my parents to get a dial up connection to the net, broadband was just around the corner and you can imagine then trying to convince them that we needed the more expensive broadband internet :lol:

I also find it funny that my dad was really against modern technology at first "people have lived thousands of years fine without it" type of guy, but now is on his laptop every day.

 

[mat]

My Grandfather was very into computers from day one and learnt how to program and make games etc, yet he was never interested or used the internet in his entire life.