Scott started a thread about who really invented the internet. It got me to thinking about how I became a "geek." I would be interested to read about how you first connected to the online world?
Scott started a thread about who really invented the internet. It got me to thinking about how I became a "geek." I would be interested to read about how you first connected to the online world?
My connection to the online world was came in early 1978. In 1976, there was a rumor that Sears was developing a computer for home use. I was anxious to be among the first to own one. One of the men in our church worked for a company that built computers. He said he could sell me one of they made at an employee price. Without really knowing what I was doing, I bought one. It could only be programed in machine language. I was determined that I was going to learn machine language. Fortunately for me, before I could master the machine language, Radio Shack came out with the TRS-80. I was on their waiting list and got one of the first.Originally Posted by Dave McClung
Within a few months after I got my TRS-80, Radio Shack came out with a 300 baud modem. I bought one and started looking for ways to use it. A local electronics store had an online bulletin board. The 300 baud dialup experience wasn't quite what we enjoy today, but I have been making friends in online communities since 1978.
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I arrived via ham radio. I was quite active in radio, especially doing phone patches for missionaries. After I got a computer I started hearing about a new form of radio communications using a computer. I bought a "terminal node controller" that connected the computer to the radio - the approach was called "packet radio." You could use it on the HF (long distance bands) but it was mostly used for VHF (local) communications. HF worked better using RTTY or a hybrid called AMTOR or PACTOR. On VHF, using packet radio, you could link different repeaters together and leave messages in another ham's mailbox. It was "email" without the internet.
The Russian MIR station had a packet radio setup on it. If you played your cards just right you could put a message in their mailbox during the 6 minutes or so it was overhead - a ham on the other side of the world could then download it when the station was on their side of the world.
This ham radio experimentation used the language that would be the language of the internet, TCP/IP. If you turned up the volume on the radio, you could actually hear the "hand shaking" going on. A lot of the early development of TCP/IP was done by ham radio operators.
That same approach is going on when we are on the internet today.
On HF our baud rate was 300. On VHF we could really fly at 1200 baud -- just a drop in the bucket compared to even dial-up speeds.
First exposure to a computer was in 1974-'75 college year. We played "Star Trek" on a green, wide paper terminal. The terminal at at Tabor College, Hillsboro, KS, and the Mainframe server was in Macpherson, if memory serves correctly. My first computer programming class was in 1976. We typed up punch cards and the technician fed them into a card reader. About half way through the semester we got terminals!
I sold Radio Shack Tandy Models 2 and 3, and the Tandy color computer, along with the "Pocket Computer". That was in 1982, just before the IBM PC came out in the mid '80s. I also spent some time with Sinclair and Commodore computers. First Internet access account was in '91. We dialed a 1-800 number to get on AOL. it was 10 cents a minute, so you programmed your email app to dial in, download email, and hang up quick. If you had to download an update, you sat up until 1AM and logged in to get a faster download speed. You set the computer to hand up and shut down when the download was complete.
What memories.
Ah! 300 baud. We had to dial up Tandy HQ in Fort Worth, TX each night to upload our sales figures. It was all manual. At least I had a telephone with an auto redial on speaker phone. So I would let it redial again and again until I heard the "handshake" tones, then I would put the telephone handset on the modem.
My first connection to the internet was in 98? with Juno on dial up.
Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. 1 John 3:18
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. 1 John 4:18a
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Mid 80s at the University of Illinois unix based system. Message boards and such, IF I remember correctly.
You can be right or you can be in relationship
Well, my husband bought a texas instruments computer in the late 70s, but that didn't interest me any. Then at the hospital in 1980 or so, we all switched to computers, so that's where I got my start in figuring out how to manipulate computers. Then in 1986, the hospital that I was working for in Jackson, Tennessee sent me to Memphis for a week of classes to learn how to program for their system, which for the life of me I cannot remember the name of it now. But it was fun.
Then, in 1998, I started working at home for the hospital, after I had been working at home for my own clients for almost 10 years by then. But working for the hospital was my first experience with the internet. I remember that I paid $2200 for my first computer (I remember because it took all of my hospital bonus money from that quarter!! LOL). After we got it hooked up to the internet, the first thing I did was do a search for "Nazarene" -- and VOILA, there was NAZNET!!! And the rest is history!!!
I have to say that I learned A LOT of technical stuff about the internet from the NazNet geniuses!! I appreciate so much their patience in teaching this computer novice so much over the years. Everyone now thinks I'm so smart.......LOL Little do they know where I gained most of my internet knowledge!!! ha ha ha
Thanks, NazNet......
Dana
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We had decided to upgrade our black and white 9 inch MacIntosh to an Apple G3 Power Mac ... a distinguished tower ... including AOL dial up as a feature. Both the MacIntosh and the G3 Power Mac are functional but idle collecting dust in our computer museum family room. Technology creates its own graveyard.
So far, I'm one of only two who answered "Before Prodigy or Compuserve by dial up." Though two others have said "Other by dial up."
Honestly, I don't remember when I first got online. Sometime in the '80's (I think) my parents brought home a Commodore 64. That was my intro to computers. I loved it. Eventually that led to buying me a Commodore Amiga 500. I think the modem I remember was for the Amiga. And I can't remember if we jumped in at 300, 1200, or the blazingly fast 2400 baud. I know it was before the 14.4k modems.
I'd have to look it up to see when Prodigy and Compuserve got started to see if I answered the poll correctly. But I know my first adventures online were BBS'es. This was all so long ago, and I was young enough (high school), that my memories of it are fuzzy.
I was at ONU when the WorldWide Web was born thanks to the Mosaic browser. Because I'd briefly been a computer science major (before switching to Religion), worked in the computer lab, and still had friends in that department (like NazNet's Dan Hamlin), I was invited to be one of the first to be wired for internet in my dorm room. That was sophomore year, I believe, so '93-'94.
After leaving ONU, we had free dial up service with NetZero and Juno, and then eventually DSL.
My husband did some experimental things with our Amiga 500 but I didn't join the online world until we bought our first Windows computer in 1994 and it included a modem and AOL software.
We did long-distance at first and eventually 10¢/minute to an 800 number. The rule was to connect only for upload and download, never for reading or, worse, typing. We allotted so many minutes per month per family member.
I participated in an AOL forum for Nazarenes in those early days. There was a memory cap per post. One could either split expansive thoughts into two or more posts or do some editing to fit them into one. It's probably hard to tell after all this time of unlimited space, but I benefited from the challenge of trying to condense my thoughts to avoid overflow.
I'm not quite a charter member of NazNet because I wasn't in the habit of wandering around in the uncharted territories of the internet outside AOL and it took me a while to discover it. I wish I knew exactly when I joined up. Sometime in 1996.
Marsha
"Transformation comes more from pursuing profound questionsblog: www.marshalyn.blogspot.com
than seeking practical answers."
-- Peter Block in The Answer to How Is Yes
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I think we jumped on the C-64 pretty early. That was July of 1983. (I remember the date because of an adventure while buying a floppy drive for it on the due date of our first child, a week or so after buying the computer.)
I think the Amiga 500 was introduced in 1987. It cost around $500. When the keyboard broke on our first one, we bought another one just like it and were on that system for a total of seven years.
How I wish Commodore had not lost the marketing game. They were so far ahead in the 1980s of what was to become Microsoft Windows.
Marsha
"Transformation comes more from pursuing profound questionsblog: www.marshalyn.blogspot.com
than seeking practical answers."
-- Peter Block in The Answer to How Is Yes
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If I had just stuck around ONU for a few more years I could have had the internet
Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. 1 John 3:18
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. 1 John 4:18a
Become an organ donor ~ donatelife.net ~ www.organdonor.gov
wow! that is earlier that Steve Jobs!
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My first online connection was with a Nazarene group on Prodigy. Maybe 1993? DOS and baud. I bought 8 MB of ram to speed up my computer for $320.
Yes, Greg. We were competitors with the early Apple computers. Kind of amazing to think about it. And the debate continues...
My fist computer experience was by way of an apple IIe in elementary school in second grade circa 1981. My first connection to the internet came by way of my high school library computer (yes my school of 1200 had one online computer for students) circa 1992.
My first personal computer was a second hand Macintosh performa with 16 megs of ram. I was on that computer that I got on AOL-circa 1995, at that same time I was at ENC and they had an online computer lab.
I used apple products before it was a cool thing to do.
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