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tapu
01-12-2014, 01:16 PM
When I was an undergraduate at the University of California in the early 80s, I was in a Linguistics class where they gave us what was later called an email address. This worked within the UC computer system and we used it to submit homework, ask the professor questions, and have personal communications (about class-related content/work) with other students in the class.

I remember it seemed almost mystical. The idea of personal computers (Apple was just launching) being able to communicate in a web or network was mind-boggling.

Later on, we learned about its beginnings on "The Well," out of San Francisco, and I time it with the original MacIntosh (?) and the gray scale graphics. Some time later on, I was signing up on BBS's on a rudimentary pc at home, and eventually AOL, which used graphics that were "drawn" with repeated keyboard characters at the time--I kid you not!

I'd love to flesh out this memory with others who were primed at that time to embrace the new technology. I'd also love to hear anyone of any age's story about early internet experiences.

~the tapu

Liam
01-12-2014, 01:42 PM
My earliest memory of the internet is an auditory one - the boing boing, crackle crackle, swish sound of my modem connecting me to a new world.

tapu
01-12-2014, 02:05 PM
Oh my god, of course. I can hear it if I just think about it. Can you place it in time, or development? Were you on BBSs before and then on a service like AOL? Do you know anything about The Well?

Liam
01-12-2014, 04:17 PM
Oh my god, of course. I can hear it if I just think about it. Can you place it in time, or development? Were you on BBSs before and then on a service like AOL? Do you know anything about The Well?

It was 1994, AOL was my service provider. I don't know anything about The Well.

dark_crystal
01-12-2014, 04:36 PM
Me and two heterosexual couples chatting with randoms over aol at the home of the only one of us who owned a computer

1994

SirLucian
01-12-2014, 04:39 PM
found the best friends ever...............
Best Loves ever

But it has changed and this make Me very sad:confused:

easygoingfemme
01-12-2014, 04:58 PM
Early 90s in college. Had a professor who was insisting that we all communicate with him via email. Which meant going to a computer lab and getting an account, and so on. So I didn't. And the teacher was frustrated.

Then a different teacher, not my teacher, and someone who I had become good friends with through a writing group, told me about email and took me to the lab to set up an account with me and we both emailed and did some archaic version of instant messaging and I was like, Whoa.


Then said teacher got totally addicted to the wealth of worthless and some worthy information on the internet and spent a couple of months staying up all night at the computer lab printing stacks of paper. Including a list of the 20 most creative ways to fail your finals in college. Which he printed and we ran around campus at 2am tacking up on the walls of big test rooms.

A few years later I was working on my senior thesis and it turned out most of my information (data on violence against women in prison) was available online through underground sources, vs in books or newspapers, and I was one of the first people in my department to turn in a thesis largely sourced from internet research, rather than books. ( I still did good old fashioned letter writing and interviews, but due to the nature of the subject, there was a lot more info online than individuals who wanted to go on the record talking to me)

I didn't know how to copy paste, so I had to hand write out all of the URLs in my notebook and then type them out again on paper to site sources.

I feel very old now.

tapu
01-12-2014, 05:44 PM
That is fucking excellent!

*Anya*
01-12-2014, 06:14 PM
My long-term ex and I got our first computer in 1989, it cost a fortune, was very large and I got so excited every day when I dialed up and heard: "You've got mail"!

:computer:

JustLovelyJenn
01-12-2014, 06:22 PM
We got our first in home internet connection in my junior year of high school. I used to sneak down to the office at night, wait for the dial-up connection... and chat with folks in Scotland and England on Yahoo! Voice Chat...

Allison W
01-12-2014, 06:38 PM
I was twelve years old, back in like 1998 or 1999, on AOL. I am glad to have left those days behind.

aishah
01-17-2014, 06:52 PM
early 90s playing ascii oregon trail on those big boxy computers in second grade at school.

i think we got a computer at home when i was 8 or so (so 1996?) - i remember looking up stuff that i wasn't supposed to (specifically about paganism) and trying to hide it from my mom, hehehehe.

starryeyes
01-17-2014, 07:47 PM
The grateful dead chat room on AOL.... Probably like 1995??? I was way to young to be in there and there were way too many old creepies but it was fun!!!!

fatallyblonde
01-17-2014, 08:01 PM
oh man... I do remember the magic of the internet, this whole new world being opened to us... it was so mythical... so bizarre, the concept of it so wild.
It was about 1995... I looked up Who Framed Roger Rabbit, one of my fave ever movies, and came across a fansite... ahhhh the rush of nostalgia!

Orema
06-24-2014, 08:07 PM
I read a piece on the difference between Jiffy Mix and homemade cornbread on USENET in one of the social culture newsgroups. It was a brilliant and hilarious article. This was before AOL, or blogs, etc. The ISPs were Delphi, Earthlink, Mindspring and some others ... and dial-up modems ruled. USENET was available at most (all?) universities.

ProfPacker
06-24-2014, 08:23 PM
yes, Earthlink an Prodigy. I had a computer in 1985 but I think my ex and I really connected to the internet via prodigy when she was going to China to adopt our oldest...we were so excited that we could instantly see the weather. By her second trip in 2006 we were skyping

Orema
06-24-2014, 09:26 PM
yes, Earthlink an Prodigy. I had a computer in 1985 but I think my ex and I really connected to the internet via prodigy when she was going to China to adopt our oldest...we were so excited that we could instantly see the weather. By her second trip in 2006 we were skyping

Yes, I remember Prodigy... and I had an Atari computer in 1985. I got it from Chemical Bank in NYC. They were giving away Atari computers to customers to use their online banking service called "Pronto." Someone gave me a demo in the bank and I signed up.

I was able to connect to some BBS boards, but not the internet in 1985. When I finally did get on in the early 1990s, I needed to know DOS and that wasn't happening. I finally got on the internet in the summer of 1995 using Delphi then I switched to Earthlink and stayed with them for a few years.

stargazingboi
06-25-2014, 06:52 AM
I remember in the late 80s seeing my first computer in a college accounting class and being shown how to navigate Dos to connect to the email system to submit homework

cricket26
06-25-2014, 07:07 AM
i was 30 years old when i got my first home computer which may seem strange to those who have not known life with out a computer...and it is hard to explain how an inatimate object can make your heart race when it says "you've got mail" but looking back...it did...hahahaha :)

Queenie
06-25-2014, 10:31 AM
d0mg9DxvfZE


My earliest memory of the Internet was when I was 14 and my father got our first family computer. I remember using it for school reports and looking recipes for cookies. I do kinda miss the sound of dial up tho.

EnderD_503
06-25-2014, 03:03 PM
We got the internet when I was about 12 years old I think (around '97 maybe). Some of the earliest things I remember is setting up my first hotmail account, discovering teen and music chatrooms and then later trolling MSN chatrooms. The latter were often Latter Day Saints/Born Again ones where I would spout off random Slayer lyrics as everyone hurried to reform me...yep I was that barely pubescent douchebag :| Thankfully the novelty (but not my love for Slayer) wore off fast and to this day don't know why I was so amused by it in my proto-internet days lol

deathbypoem
06-25-2014, 03:52 PM
hmm.. Chatting on napster! lmao and ICQ! hahaha.. wow. yeah. old times.

imperfect_cupcake
01-06-2015, 02:11 AM
I was about 26 and went to Uni (be in 96-ish). I went online and used Dogpile to look up something and then moved on the linked journal data bases for research.

The first social thing I ever did on line was look at match.com. Met my first long term gf that way. Then I found a blog (weren't called blogs back then. it was just sort of a profile web page) of a femme writing about being with a stone butch and all of a sudden the world hit me. I followed her links to the butchfemme dash site. That was in 99. my first chat room was there. I never did IRC or AOL. No point.

snowbrdr303
01-06-2015, 05:30 AM
BBS services accessible via telnet and what not. Early/mid 90s....My friends and I would stay up late trying to find various BBSs with games (entirely text based, don't fool yourself). Or building our own and connecting to one another's computer. All the while trying to muffle the sounds of the obnoxious dial-up modems from our parents. Thank god for broadband.

Then after that came Prodigy (remember Prodigy? Yeah exactly) and AOL.

I still mess around with computers all day. :/

Cailin
01-06-2015, 07:48 AM
I remember downloading on windows 95.. midi files... When things were only byte, and kilo byte size (not this mega bytes we have now).

But i will always remember infinity chat. Some of my best friends came from there. I met my friend marcie almost 20 years ago, and we still talk all the time.

Daniela
01-06-2015, 09:13 AM
oh wow, talk about dating yourself. lol

I used to read alt.gothic between 1995-1997 (I was about 21 at the time and yes, I was a goth :blush:). Holy shit, times have changed since then. I remember waiting to download pictures people would post...and it would sometimes take about 10 fucking minutes before you were able to see some grainy crap photo that wasn't worth it anyway.

DapperButch
01-06-2015, 03:28 PM
I remember Prodigy. My girlfriend at the time was living with her ex-boyfriend's family (don't ask), and they had a computer with Prodigy. I didn't really understand it all but remember the bulletin boards. This was the early-mid 1990's.

Soon (maybe 1995?) I got a computer and was on AOL personals and their gay/lesbian message boards. I remember when aol personals changed over to match.com and I remember the aol message boards fading out. I also did the aol gay chats. Until about 5 years ago I was still friends with a woman from Utah from the aol boards. AOL is still my email and I am still a member.

By 1997/98? (whatever year it started), I was on butch-femme.com so that satisfied my loss of the aol boards.

I can still hear the dial up sound too, in my head. I remember getting "booted off" if you didn't disable your call waiting. Or just getting booted off for no reason. It was very frustrating if you were in the middle of a conversation! Everything was slow.

If it wasn't for the internet us lesbian/gays/queers would still only have the bars to find each other!

Cin
01-06-2015, 05:00 PM
I remember using a computer in school first before I remember anything about the internet. I took a programing course and everyone was trying to learn computer languages like fortran, although then it was FORTRAN. It was the popular thing to take at the time. There was a mainframe computer. And there were IBMs and Macs with word processing programs; they were like giant typewriters. Then I remember personal computers becoming somewhat affordable and my roommate had one with dial up AOL. Napster was big fun then. There were mailing lists for butches and femmes and I had fun with those for awhile and of course there was b-f.com in the late 90s. Damn I am old. And still technically challenged.

Kelt
01-06-2015, 08:14 PM
I remember computers form work before personal computers and doing back-ups onto a tape drive. The 'cartridge' was about 18 inches in diameter and someone had to take a copy home every night.

Not too long after home pc's started coming out with the 286's. It was all DOS and I couldn't make head or tail of it. I really didn't see any use for them at home but my best buddy was all kinds of into it. He bought a 486 and kept trying to talk me into getting one too. I ended up being in a car accident and it was clear I wasn't going to be doing much but sitting for quite a while and he finally talked me into it as something to do. I was clueless and just gave him a bunch of money to get me what he though would be best. He managed to spend $4000.00 and came back with a 486 with 4mb(kb?) of RAM and 2 drives the 5 1/2 and the sure to be a hit 3.5 that nobody was using yet. The OS was windows 3.0 It took me a while to not be afraid of breaking it and the first thing he managed to get me interested in was accessing the public library. I found out that I could get anything I wanted brought to my local branch and I loved it.

Then I found out there were girls in there. :blink: I was hooked on BBS's. :cheesy:

The rest is history.

GeorgiaMa'am
01-06-2015, 09:03 PM
My first computer memory is excitedly going to my uncle's office with him in the middle of the night. "I think I found another one!" he said, I recall. We were going to play Adventure on his gigantic office computer, a RPG that was completely text based - no graphics, just white ASCII characters on a black screen. It required a 5-1/4" floppy disk, and took forever to boot up. The people at the electric company where he worked were really excited over it; there was a giant, hand-drawn map on the wall over the computer, showing the parts of the maze that had been uncovered so far. This is also my first beloved memory of gaming addiction. I was about 12, so this was in the late 70s. That would have made it several years in advance of the actual internet.

In college I had a student email account, and a little exposure to BBSes. I didn't have much interest in the internet until I managed to get my own computer, around the early 1990s. I started out with Compuserve, and joined a forum for pagans. We had full moon rituals online in chat, which worked in some ways and others not so much. The first time I was in charge of part of the ritual, I typed out my part in notepad in advance, planning to copy and paste it into chat one line at a time. I had never tried this previously, and did not discover until too late that I couldn't paste into CS's chat. Furiously switching from window to window, I hastily tried to type it all quickly ... I occasionally still think of our attempts to invoke the God and Goddess electronically. Probably by now, there is an app for that.

imperfect_cupcake
01-06-2015, 09:25 PM
My first computer memories are different to my first internat memories. I could not get the Internet unless at school. It was too expensive to get it. I couldn't afford a computer that did it. I had an old machine that did DOS to write papers on at home when I was 24.

But my first computer memory was the computers at my dad's work, at his lab, at the university. They ran on cards. Punch cards. Students would be using box lids to carry their PhD thesis in them. Dad said he watched a student trip and fall and watch the cards go everywhere. They have to be in the right order, obviously.fed into the computer.So the student freaked out.

But the net was too expensive for me to be able to get in a house full of early 20 something artists, none of whom had any use for the net. We were too busy painting, playing music, drinking and having sex.

Only when I realised that I was more interested in research that the Internet became more important - libraries weren't exhaustive for journals. And then the idea to look for perhaps maybe women scientists on match.com entered my head... Because the university I then moved to, away from college, only had these separatist, angry and really snobbish lesbians who wouldn't speak to me because I was bisexual (at the time).

That's how I found my first butch (into femmes. I knew oodles of leather butches into each other) Though, I had zero idea at the time that was what she was or what was coming...

starryeyes
01-06-2015, 11:23 PM
Going into the AOL Grateful Dead chat is definitely my earliest memory!! I think I was like 12?? lol.

MsTinkerbelly
01-07-2015, 12:42 AM
My first internet memories are from the late 90's and dial-up, although i never went to chat sites. I was on match.com and yahoo.com where i met my wife in 2002...i played internet games like blackjack...and then i found the old dash site.

homoe
03-18-2016, 07:42 PM
I remember when "think bubbles" were a command! You'd hit the / then type the word 'think' and either you could type in your own thoughts or the program thoughts would automatically just pop up and appear in the bubbles!

meridiantoo
03-18-2016, 08:02 PM
I remember DOS commands and the green cursor/words. I remember my father telling me that they were inventing the Internet. He told me how it would work, what it would do. I was about 16-17 at the time. My first computer game was King's Quest. I had no idea what was coming lol

Oh, and I wrote papers for High School on Word Perfect.

randrum
03-18-2016, 09:43 PM
AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) and all the silly "away messages" my friends amd I would put up.

homoe
03-18-2016, 09:54 PM
I remember when you could yank back an email if it hadn't been open yet by the recipient! Wish we still had that little gem of a feature, I say no more!!!

~ocean
03-19-2016, 01:12 AM
in 2001 the first time I ever saw the net ~ Yahoo's home page had that song YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO lol

WickedFemme
03-19-2016, 01:30 AM
back in the day... 1995 - I had a desk top that was huge and was on aol chatting in a gay chat room...lol... then along came b-f .com in 1999. I recall being in that chat every day since... hahahaha.

clay
03-19-2016, 07:31 AM
2000...my very first Internet experience!

MSN Chat Rooms..the W4W ones....my brother showed me these on his computer. I was hooked...met my previous partner online there......we were both internet/chatroom virgins...lol

homoe
04-05-2016, 08:07 PM
That LOUD & IRRITATING sound of 'dial up':hangloose:

storyspinner70
04-05-2016, 10:44 PM
That LOUD & IRRITATING sound of 'dial up':hangloose:

AOL for the win!!!! Not. Lord god that long long connect. And the anger when someone forgot and picked up the phone before it connected or pitched a fit when you were on it and they just HAD to make a call.

I had a computer long before I had internet. Thinking back makes me nostalgic. lol...Tiny amber screen. Floppy. Dos. My parents bought it for me to write my poetry and novels and school papers on. Oh, and so I could print them out on that loud ass printer. It was so awesome then.

dreadgeek
04-07-2016, 01:54 PM
Using a 1200 baud coupler modem (the kind where you literally put the handset into the modem!) for a local BBS. (That will give you an idea how long ago *that* was!)

My first embarrassing Internet moment was when I had my first real PC (486 DX/16Mhz processor, 128mb hard drive, 8megs of ram) and I fell for an early iteration of "there is a new and dangerous virus that will delete all your files!" email which I then posted somewhere in the USENET hierarchy.

I've had some form of online access for 30 years now.

Cheers
AJ

dreadgeek
04-07-2016, 01:54 PM
AOL for the win!!!! Not. Lord god that long long connect. And the anger when someone forgot and picked up the phone before it connected or pitched a fit when you were on it and they just HAD to make a call.

I had a computer long before I had internet. Thinking back makes me nostalgic. lol...Tiny amber screen. Floppy. Dos. My parents bought it for me to write my poetry and novels and school papers on. Oh, and so I could print them out on that loud ass printer. It was so awesome then.

I'm very proud to say that I've *never* had an AOL account! Never.

Cheers
AJ

Greyson
04-08-2016, 12:24 AM
My earliest memories of the Internet are the late 90's at Gay.com in the Butch-Femme room. I laughed my butt off. There were some very funny people there. I was an internet virgin. Then one day I scrolled down to the Leather Room. I walked in and there was no turning back. From there I found the "Dash" site in 98 and from there to here.

girl_dee
05-12-2016, 05:32 AM
My earliest memories of the Internet are the late 90's at Gay.com in the Butch-Femme room. I laughed my butt off. There were some very funny people there. I was an internet virgin. Then one day I scrolled down to the Leather Room. I walked in and there was no turning back. From there I found the "Dash" site in 98 and from there to here.


Me too! I was in the "older lesbians" room even though i was technically too young. ... heh

Wr sure had some laughs......

girl_dee
05-12-2016, 05:34 AM
I remember DOS commands and the green cursor/words. I remember my father telling me that they were inventing the Internet. He told me how it would work, what it would do. I was about 16-17 at the time. My first computer game was King's Quest. I had no idea what was coming lol

Oh, and I wrote papers for High School on Word Perfect.

I still niss DOS commands! I like driving the computer.

TL1
05-12-2016, 05:45 AM
Aol
Dial up
Aol lesbian chat rooms
Though I rarely use it that aol email is still active

girl_dee
05-12-2016, 07:02 PM
Never had AOL, I had AT&T,,,

I just remember being able to find information on ANYTHING. Isn't it amazing to be in the era where the internet was introduced?

~ocean
05-12-2016, 08:49 PM
Me too! I was in the "older lesbians" room even though i was technically too young. ... heh

Wr sure had some laughs......

I was there too Dee lol and yes we had many many laughs back then ~ also here and in the dash as well..** sings ** memoriesssss

girl_dee
05-12-2016, 09:24 PM
I was there too Dee lol and yes we had many many laughs back then ~ also here and in the dash as well..** sings ** memoriesssss

yes we did Ocean lady...... omg i should have never ventured into that place......:blush:

Venus007
05-13-2016, 04:10 AM
I loved computers from the moment I met them.
I used to prowl around the University of Notre Dame when I was like 11 and I would see the students with their punch cards in boxes rushing about and looking terribly intelligent and important.

My first personal computer experience was at my friend Adam's house, his parents were wealthy and his dad had a computer, it was HUGE. We read that we could cause it to generate tones at particular frequencies and tried to control the toaster via sympathetic hZ tones. (We were like 13 or 14)

I took a BASIC programming class in the 9th or 10th grade (early to mid 1980s) and became besotted with computers and programming (I went on to take COBOL, FORTRAN, and Assembler)

A friend of mine had CompuServe (we paid to connect hourly and it could rack up FAST) and I remember being able to read the NY Times and the San Francisco Chronicle digitally. There were also odd conversations with fellow tech nerds (we didn't even call ourselves that at the time)

The CompuServe connection was done through an acoustic coupler that the phone receiver fit into
http://www.coqdiddles.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/acoustic-coupler.jpg

After that it was AOL, when I started there were an amazing number of people on, like 35,000 (heh)

After that it has been a continuous connection throughout my life.
I met several love and ahem other interests via the web
Some of my very best friends were met this way as well

girl_dee
08-18-2017, 02:59 AM
I was there too Dee lol and yes we had many many laughs back then ~ also here and in the dash as well..** sings ** memoriesssss

i MISS chatting with you !! :crybaby::missu:

PlatinumPearl
09-16-2017, 07:50 AM
AIM - AOL Messenger and ICQ.

A friend in college introduced me to the internet and chat rooms we use to meet up in the school computer lab and check out ICQ chat rooms it was all so fascinating to me.

I don't recall how but I use to get the AOL disks in the mail for free dial-up internet for set number of hours and always managed to go over. After going over I had to wait for a new disk to be mailed out which got frustrating at times until one day I called AOL to complain and an AOL Rep told me tips to save on the time used on the net to read and respond to emails.

I still recall using pillows to muffle out the sound of connecting to the internet in the wee hours of the morning not wanting to wake up family members lol. Good times!

Femmewench
09-16-2017, 08:42 AM
I joined AOL and found OnQ right away. The OnQ chat rooms had moderators. I'd slip into a room hoping just to observe and every damn time someone would say hello to me. I just wanted to hide until I felt I knew what was going on!

I met my best friend and many others there.

cathexis
09-16-2017, 09:55 AM
I still niss DOS commands! I like driving the computer.

One area in my life where I refused to be Toppped ... by my computer. Sometimes, I'd like to strip Windows off and go back to good ole X-Tree Gold to really find and fix the problem.

One night, I was trying to get to an onion site, and could not "get under" Windows. Fixed the problem, but it would have been quicker/easier if I didn't have to install TOR right THEN.

Earliest computer memory? A Tandy put it together yourself 286. Soon upgraded to a 486. I, too had Delphi Forums and CompuServe, but mostly BBS's. Except that there was this one science site, think it was called Alta-Vista. Used to go to the GTs as well. Was a sub-op for awhile on a fairly large site. Most of the BBS's were full of "ankle byters."

Must disagree with the majority opinion.
I LOVE the sound of a computer handshake. You can always tell if you're connected and generally how good the reception is going to be (i.e. are you likely to be bumped off the site).