An interesting report of 80's "internet"

How about this - http://www.youtube.com/user/VintageCG#p/a/f/0/5WCTn4FljUQ way back in 1981 you could read the news papers online! Well, sort of if you waited 2 hours for it to download the text only files.

 

I can already tell that in a few years I'll seem like such an old man to the kids.

"In my day we had them-there 56k modems that zipped along a 5KB/s if you were lucky, and cost 1p a minute, and you couldn't use your phone at the same time, and if someone dialed your number you'd get disconnected!"

 

Saying that now makes you sound like an old fart. That was about 10 to 15 years ago wasn't it? I remember my first use of the net back in 1997 or 1996. We waited 20 minutes for a tinny little shitty picture of some SNK Fighter to appear on the screen. Oh, how things have changed in such little time.

 

Alternatively you could have used Ceefax or Oracle (better known as Teletext) even in the late 70s to get news. Here is a nice article on Teletext

http://teletext.mb21.co.uk/timeline/video-action.shtml

It's painful to see that back in 1980 the pound was worth US $2.26 and 541(!) Japanese yen...

There was also Prestel in the UK and Minitel in France, so by the early 80s you could book flights, do online banking, send electronic mails and all matter of stuff that everyone does nowdays anyway.

In my day you had to pick up the phone, and put into an accoustic coupler, dial the number by hand, press a switch and then you had 1200/75bps or if you were lucky 300 bps, you were lucky to get 30 bytes a second. You then paid for the call which would probably be around 2 to 5p a minute and you probably had to pay a fee to use the service you were using and there were possible othre charges too.

Damn americans and their free local calls, that is why Fidonet was so successful in the late 80s and 90s.

 

I see your 56k modem and raise you my 28k modem and AOL 3.0.

Seriously, imagine trying to watch a high definition video on YouTube with a 28k modem. Not only would it take days-weeks to finish buffering, but it would rack up a gigantic bill (if through landline anyway).

 

I started on Compuserve on a 56k modem.

My first website was the star wars website and i'd use webcrawler as my main search engine.

I loved the mid to late 90's internet, amateur pages ranked right up there with the commercial stuff and you could spend hours just looking at random stuff. Today it's a few bookmarks and then log out.

By the time Counter Strike came out my dad had switched to AOL which was a nightmare for online gaming (and still is apparently).

My first pirated game (aside from roms which I used to download at school and stick on floppy discs) was GTA3 which I downloaded on dial up from a warez sites in about 200 parts. It took a week and worked perfectly although there was no audio.

Happy days.

 

Columbus! Represent!

 

We had Teletext in our TVs since I can think off TVs.

 

That I would call anything but perfectly.

 

Dont tell me, but did you also had an IMSAI 8080 at home?

 

"This is an experiment to see what it means to us as editors and reporters..."

You have 20 years until the print industry goes tits up. Better start doing coke now.

 

Whoops, I meant music. :Rock:

 

Was Teletext only in Europe? I also remember it from such early days. It was slow at times but faster than any internet of the day. I also remember it was used for subtitles by entering "888" if the program supported them.

I once stumbled upon a test page on ITV's service once. That was pretty cool even if it was basically just a few odd shapes and flashing text with a few HOLD and REVEAL options.

Yakumo

 

We had teletext in New Zesland, I think aussie may have got it too.

 

56k is not that old anyway, in the town I live broadband arrived only three years ago and internet keys weren't really common place back then. And the people who had satellite connections were very few.

 

My first modem was 2400. In college I had 14.4, so totally had to wank to static images. Oh, how times have changed.

 

Well, the guy at the end was right, that was the future.
Ahh, technology...

On a different note, I remember being in kindergarten when we got our first dial up modem. The connection sound it made is still burned into my mind. Ahh how I loved that sound

 

How about this modem? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9dpXHnJXaE

 

The first modem i had at home was a 9.200 if i'm not mistaken. I remember friends talking about how fast the 28.800 USRobotics was and dreamed to have it at home.

 

Haha, awesome!

@ Yakumo: Very interesting video, I also watched another video in that channel about the history of computer graphics, that one reminded me of some videos you posted some time ago about 3D animations in the 70s/80s. Awesome stuff.