Remember?

[AlienMenace]

Hello All;

Does anyone remember the first time being on the Internet without the WWW
world wide web. When it was all text base and you had to know unix to get around in it. Or have a company like "Delphi" to access the internet like me.
And you had to use "Archie, Gopher, Veronica and Jughead" to get around i it.
And to have an Internet access book. Like a telephone book for the internet. Boy, was that a headache. LOL.

 

[strollin]

Yup. My first ISP simply provided me with a local account on their unix box that I could dial into. I used a PC terminal program called ProComm Plus to establish the connection which only provided you with a command line prompt.

The WWW was there and could be accessed, but it was all text based with no graphics.

I remember what a pain it was to retrieve a file from a remote server. First you had to use FTP to copy the file from the remote server to your local account, then you had to initiate a download from the unix prompt, then switch over to the PC and initiate a receive. Great fun.

 

[Darren]

Nope. I'm to young. Earliest I can remember actively using the internet was runescape...

 

[StrangleHold]

program called ProComm Plus

Made me think of what happen to them. Looks like Datastorm was bought out by Quarterdeck in 1996 and then by Symantec in 1998

 

[voyagerfan99]

Nope, I'm too young. I've always had GUI's with all my computers.

 

[DMGrier]

Nope to young, but speaking of remembering the other day I installed duke nukem ed on my tablet and it did make me remember the days of installing games through DOS, the fun that was.

 

[tremmor]

Way before internet it was dial up and bulletin boards.
Nothing else. Everything and every where ya went it was
toll call or long distance. Used that for years also.

 

[strollin]

Yup. Each BBS was similar to a website but had it's own dial-in numbers, could be local or might be long distance. If long distance, you paid toll charges. Most BBSes were free but the phone charges could bite you good.

 

[tremmor]

One time and talking many years ago. My phone bill was over $300.
Shhh......don't tell my wife.

 

[paulcheung]

And some programs you have to connect to their server to verify the license every time you use it.
What pain in the butt.

 

[Thanatos]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking

thread kinda reminded me of this.

 

[TankerHC]

Yea, and I can also remember when the pre Web Internet wasnt available and we all used BBS's. I ran one ( I was a SYSOP) with 12 Nodes using Mustang Software. Prior to Mustang I used some software that was written by a friend who was Editor of Commodore Magazine in Copperas Cove Texas at the time, I ran it on an Amiga using a 5 1/4 inch drive. We had stick men games (ASCHI), you could chat, and yes we had, by popular demand, porn. That came later when we moved to the 386's and were able to make it available on CD, and it was readily accessible (The Board) with a Commodore VIC-20 or 64 and a 1200 baud Modem. But for real speed, you might at that time have wanted to pick up a 64K ram expander module. I had over 500 subscribers paying 5 dollars a month for 2 hours a day unless they were just chatting then it was 4 hours and 10 dollars a month for unlimited. Then more people started buying 486's, mostly the SX33's when they were launched, they ran $4000-$5000. My first one I bought at Sears for around $4300. Had a 25mb HDD and 256K or RAM. Prodigy was launched and we lost a lot of our BBS customers, for a while. Until they started getting their phone bills. Didnt take long for them to come back. BBS's were a fun thing. We held meetings. The only way to pay was to meet me, so every other Friday night either I or one of my Co-SYSOPS would go have coffee at the local IHOP and everyone from 6PM to 11PM would stop by to pay their 5 or 10 dollars. We did a lot with what little we had back then. What finally killed us wasnt AOL either. Or the Web itself. It was Compuserve. They launched a competing service to AOL called WOW! And they offered free long distance connections and 24 hour unlimited service for 20 bucks a month. Not long after they launched, I and lots of other local BBS's closed up shop.

 

[Thanatos]

Yea, and I can also remember when the pre Web Internet wasnt available and we all used BBS's. I ran one ( I was a SYSOP) with 12 Nodes using Mustang Software. Prior to Mustang I used some software that was written by a friend who was Editor of Commodore Magazine in Copperas Cove Texas at the time, I ran it on an Amiga using a 5 1/4 inch drive. We had stick men games (ASCHI), you could chat, and yes we had, by popular demand, porn. That came later when we moved to the 386's and were able to make it available on CD, and it was readily accessible (The Board) with a Commodore VIC-20 or 64 and a 1200 baud Modem. But for real speed, you might at that time have wanted to pick up a 64K ram expander module. I had over 500 subscribers paying 5 dollars a month for 2 hours a day unless they were just chatting then it was 4 hours and 10 dollars a month for unlimited. Then more people started buying 486's, mostly the SX33's when they were launched, they ran $4000-$5000. My first one I bought at Sears for around $4300. Had a 25mb HDD and 256K or RAM. Prodigy was launched and we lost a lot of our BBS customers, for a while. Until they started getting their phone bills. Didnt take long for them to come back. BBS's were a fun thing. We held meetings. The only way to pay was to meet me, so every other Friday night either I or one of my Co-SYSOPS would go have coffee at the local IHOP and everyone from 6PM to 11PM would stop by to pay their 5 or 10 dollars. We did a lot with what little we had back then. What finally killed us wasnt AOL either. Or the Web itself. It was Compuserve. They launched a competing service to AOL called WOW! And they offered free long distance connections and 24 hour unlimited service for 20 bucks a month. Not long after they launched, I and lots of other local BBS's closed up shop.

Could you take the time to briefly explain Telnet to me? I've heard about it in many different places, but I've never understood what it was or what it was for.

 

[AlienMenace]

I was on a lot of BBS boards also. Boy, do I really feel old now. LOL

 

[TankerHC]

Could you take the time to briefly explain Telnet to me? I've heard about it in many different places, but I've never understood what it was or what it was for.

OK, off the top of my head, and I havent used it in years. Telnet is Telecommunications Network (Or something like that) its a simple secure password driven protocol that would let you log into a network. IIRC, Terminal was an TELNET Client. I think we (or a lot of the users) logged in with Terminal once people started getting their 486's with Win 3.1, as it was a lot easier than configuring another Telnet Client when Terminal was already built in and all you had to do was click to bring it up, add the phone number and log in with username and password. (There may have been some minor configuration, I cant remember).

DOS also had a Terminal, you could simply log into a BBS from the Command Prompt. If I am not mistaken, Windows 7, CMD is a remnant of the DOS Terminal (Im sure someone will correct me if I am wrong).

 

[strollin]

Yea, and I can also remember when the pre Web Internet wasnt available and we all used BBS's. I ran one ( I was a SYSOP) with 12 Nodes using Mustang Software. Prior to Mustang I used some software that was written by a friend who was Editor of Commodore Magazine in Copperas Cove Texas at the time, I ran it on an Amiga using a 5 1/4 inch drive. We had stick men games (ASCHI), you could chat, and yes we had, by popular demand, porn. That came later when we moved to the 386's and were able to make it available on CD, and it was readily accessible (The Board) with a Commodore VIC-20 or 64 and a 1200 baud Modem. But for real speed, you might at that time have wanted to pick up a 64K ram expander module. I had over 500 subscribers paying 5 dollars a month for 2 hours a day unless they were just chatting then it was 4 hours and 10 dollars a month for unlimited. Then more people started buying 486's, mostly the SX33's when they were launched, they ran $4000-$5000. My first one I bought at Sears for around $4300. Had a 25mb HDD and 256K or RAM. Prodigy was launched and we lost a lot of our BBS customers, for a while. Until they started getting their phone bills. Didnt take long for them to come back. BBS's were a fun thing. We held meetings. The only way to pay was to meet me, so every other Friday night either I or one of my Co-SYSOPS would go have coffee at the local IHOP and everyone from 6PM to 11PM would stop by to pay their 5 or 10 dollars. We did a lot with what little we had back then. What finally killed us wasnt AOL either. Or the Web itself. It was Compuserve. They launched a competing service to AOL called WOW! And they offered free long distance connections and 24 hour unlimited service for 20 bucks a month. Not long after they launched, I and lots of other local BBS's closed up shop.

I was a co-SYSOP on an IBM employee BBS many years ago.

I also belonged to many different BBSes and don't remember paying for any of them, I certainly didn't have to go meet in person with the SYSOP to pay every month.

Interesting that you mention Prodigy, I was on Prodigy from it's beginning. It was a joint venture between IBM and Sears. I was an IBM employee and got free access for the first year or 2. Compared to the typical text-based BBS, Prodigy was extremely slow but much more user friendly for the masses.

 

[TankerHC]

I was a co-SYSOP on an IBM employee BBS many years ago.

I also belonged to many different BBSes and don't remember paying for any of them, I certainly didn't have to go meet in person with the SYSOP to pay every month.

Interesting that you mention Prodigy, I was on Prodigy from it's beginning. It was a joint venture between IBM and Sears. I was an IBM employee and got free access for the first year or 2. Compared to the typical text-based BBS, Prodigy was extremely slow but much more user friendly for the masses.

We made no money off of them. But the 5 and 10 dollars paid for the upkeep, new discs with free stuff and 12 telephone lines. Plus we also had a feature that if you didnt want to pay, you could still log in, create an account. But each time you logged in you were limited to 15 minutes, then booted. Then after waiting 30 minutes, you could log back in.

The issue with Prodigy wasnt speed, or ease of use. It was the telephone bills. Prodigy had no toll free numbers. So you paid long distance to connect on top of the fee to be a member.

Also if you had read Boardwatch or one of the other of several magazines that served the BBS communities, you would see that paying 5 or 10 bucks a month was VERY common as well as meet and greets.

 

[strollin]

I recall Meet & Greets as an occasional gathering so that the BBS members could meet each other in person but no money was collected. My recollection is that most BBSes asked for donations but few actually charged. It may have been common for certain BBSes to charge but I avoided those.

One of Prodigy's "strengths" was that it had a nationwide network of local numbers so it's members didn't need to worry about long distance phone bills. It was one of the reasons that Prodigy got as big as it did.

 

[TankerHC]

I recall Meet & Greets as an occasional gathering so that the BBS members could meet each other in person but no money was collected. My recollection is that most BBSes asked for donations but few actually charged. It may have been common for certain BBSes to charge but I avoided those.

One of Prodigy's "strengths" was that it had a nationwide network of local numbers so it's members didn't need to worry about long distance phone bills. It was one of the reasons that Prodigy got as big as it did.

I can understand that may have been your experience. However, there were BBS's that had hundreds of nodes. Usually they were in a leased building and a single modem, because you were running data, could end up costing hundreds of dollars a month. Add in hardware, software, other content (Which unlike the current Web, you couldn't just download, it had to be purchased), and running even a small board, could easily run into a few thousand a month. So yes, charging a few dollars was very common. And yes, there were plenty of free ones out there. You cannot even include corporate boards since they were paying for them and they had a budget. If a local SYSOP decided to connect his Board to Wildkat then it went even higher. Take a look at some old issues of Boardwatch.

Prodigy had POP's in major cities. They didnt reach out (Much) to suburbs and they didnt reach out to rural areas AT ALL. The numbers they offered to those areas were long distance and many carriers charged data fees for using those numbers, which could run into a couple of hundred dollars per month easily. Secondly, Prodigy's cost rose because the advertising failed and they started censoring big time. Then they put a limit on emails (30 per month and an addition 5 cents, then 10 cents for every email beyond 30). Prodigy launched an unlimited additional Free chatroom, thats all anyone was doing, it was costing Prodigy a ton of money in Telecom charges so Prodigy closed it, pizzing lots of subscribers off and causing them to lose LOTS of subscribers. Yes, if you lived in a highly populated area, you could dial into Prodigy locally, if not, you were dialing in long distance and usually paying additional data fees. For most people throughtout the US (Except those in major metropolitan areas) the cost to stay on Prodigy was high. At the same time Quantom cost a fortune as well and no one used it until Case changed the name to AOL and launched Chat Rooms, that was pretty much the death of Prodigy. But even AOL cost a fortune. Compuserve's WOW! forced them into an unlimited service package. I was on WOW! from the day they launched to the day they folded. I still dont know why they folded, they were definitely a contender for AOL's business. I would suspect it was the fact that although WOW! was the first to offer 20 bucks a month unlimited service, 100% of their numbers were toll free from anywhere and their GUI was excellent, well built and easy to use, when AOL launched their 20 bucks a month unlimited service and started adding tons of content, Compuserve just decided to go back to their primary source of revenue, business customers. I dont know, Compuserve never gave a reason as far as I can remember, they just announced they were dropping the service and it was gone.

 

[strollin]

I wasn't arguing with you that some BBSes cost $$, I was saying that I don't remember paying to be on any!

I live in a rural area (still don't have access to DSL or Cable internet) but Prodigy had a local number for me to call from here. I paid a flat fee and never anything more, even when they made the change to 30 emails/month limit (I just didn't send more than 30).

Compuserve is the service that scared the heck out of me since they charged on a per minute basis and varying access fees to call their scattered access points. I didn't want to be sent a huge bill at the end of the month so avoided Compuserve like the plague.