General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI remember the Internet back in the early 1990s.
Actually, even before that, in the late 1980s, when the place I worked installed a modem for me so that I could use "crawlers" to search for references from government and higher education databases accessible online. But in the early 90s, there were basically three "Online Providers" available in our area: Prodigy, CompuServ, and (a bit later) America Online.
Prodigy and CompuServ were similar in that they would, for a monthly fee, allow you to access email and other services. CompuServ offered a command line and more-or-less direct access, and Prodigy gave you a "Services" diskette that enabled a primitive content portal where you could subscribe to games, restaurant reviews and other stuff. I had direct access via work, so I subscribed to Prodigy for home/personal use, largely because back then it was a monthly flat-fee charge.
I don't remember much about it other than getting hooked into a couple of music message boards and text-based games. I found myself spending a fair amount of time on that stuff, probably 6-8 hours a week, arguing passionately about metal bands, the evolution of the blues, how to drive a permanent stake through the heart of disco, and how to add inline die-roll macros to various game elements.
Back then, IIRC, a one-month *P (as we called it) subscription was $7.95. At one point they added "premium" services that used a richer content interface and I think those were billed at an hourly rate with various access packages. So if you wanted to play 8-bit games online, or see websites with a lot of graphic content, or do certain kinds of online shopping, etc., you paid extra.
In about 1994, I think it was, I switched over to AOL, which at that time had a basic fee structure of $5.95 for a certain number of hours a month (might have been 10? not sure I remember correctly) and after that, a per-minute charge. You could also buy, for a larger monthly fee, more 'basic' hours and a slightly lower per-minute premium charge. I knew I was a heavy user so I opted for that, but even so, between then and 1996, I maxed out some credit cards and got into serious financial trouble.
So many people got into serious issues with those per-minute charges that it was a real issue. I knew people who (back then, in the 90s!) were seeing $400-500/month AOL charges on their credit cards. As soon as you could afford to, you upgraded your modem to the fastest available, so that your mail loaded faster, your chat hit the screen faster, you maximized those minutes as much as you could.
I learned to jump on, save to offline storage, jump off, read stuff, compose replies in text files, jump back on, cut and paste and send, in order to have the most time available for real-time chatting and game playing. I did all my searching at work, staying late to use their interface. Even so, personal access to the Internet got expensive. I was damn' glad when they went to the flat-fee structure in 1996. Shortly after that I discovered IRC and largely left AOL behind. A couple of years later, internal high-speed modems and local ISPs were offering browser-based access with almost everything I needed.
But I remember having to calculate every minute of use, every strategem to maximize access to the stuff I wanted while keeping costs down.
I guess it's a set of skills I'll find new uses for, now.
Thanks, Ajit Pai, you rancid pile of refuse.
disgustedly,
Bright
kentuck
(111,052 posts)AOL was very popular for a while. Compuserve was an old reliable. But I was a long-time Prodigy customer.
TygrBright
(20,755 posts)Atman
(31,464 posts)I totally relate to your story. Kinda forgot all about those days. As with everything else, the GOP seems to want to take America backwards by a few decades.
TygrBright
(20,755 posts)RKP5637
(67,086 posts)infullview
(978 posts)Teletype machines were essentially typewriters with selanoids to actuate the keys.
RKP5637
(67,086 posts)teletype had an interface into the mainframe. This was for small maintenance programs. The card readers were used for large programs.
Clarity2
(1,009 posts)Prodigy was my first forum. I don't recall how much I paid, so it couldn't have been much. Think it was AOL. I didn't explore a lot. I remember there was a list out there somwhere of websites that were available online, but I didn't venture out there until browsers were available. I had a pretty strong knowledge of DOS back then, which I recall having to use a lot. But if you asked me now, all that knowledge is gone.
Didn't realize people were racking up charges back then. I was a very young mother, and living on a tight budget. Repubs know limiting access, like limiting education, will keep poor people ignorant and in control.
DBoon
(22,340 posts)with the handful of vendors that had a business relationship with that service
Something we may get to look forward to again
TygrBright
(20,755 posts)trackfan
(3,650 posts)I still have a legacy prodigy.net email.
Leith
(7,808 posts)I got started on a Unix based student account. Mainly I was on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) where I met my now husband. Once I got the Internet Phonebook (this was before Google et al), I was amazed at how many different things you could look up.
Those were the days when putting a red rose in your text was called "graphics." Well, until webpages started putting in LSD-inspired backgrounds.
hunter
(38,303 posts)Delphi was the first to open internet service to the general public.
I first signed onto the actual internet in the later 'seventies. There were long periods of time I had no business there, when I wasn't enrolled as a student and I didn't work for any entity on the internet, but I persisted and was granted access by the grace of others. From home I'd log on with a 300 Baud modem. Even a slow reader can keep up with the text as it appears on the screen at that speed. The entire university was connected to the internet via a 56k connection. (Technically it wasn't a consumer level 56k modem. Those came later.)
My wife and I had an AOL account for a few years because friends and family had AOL accounts. If you wanted to send them email, or otherwise interact with them by computer, you had to use AOL. AOL was an island then, much as facebook is an island now for so many people. My parents still use an AOL email account.
Until we got a local ISP in the early 'nineties, I remember using the Sprint dial up network to connect to Delphi or AOL. The per-minute charges were a really big deal. You'd go in, grab what you were looking for, or post what you had to say, and then get out. You'd grab your email headers, disconnect, decide which emails were worth reading, log in again, and grab only those.
TygrBright
(20,755 posts)Per-minute charges enabled Steve Case to buy Time Warner, they were that lucrative.
I try not to slang off Mr. Case too vigorously because without him, The World's Most Wonderful Human Being and I would not be married. But he knew a good thing, and squoze it for all it was worth.
Any bets on whether some similar type of profit-making scheme will emerge now?
wearily,
Bright
steve2470
(37,457 posts)more for sentimental reasons than anything practical.
steve2470
(37,457 posts)Seriously, I never heard of the internet at all until 1993's blather about information superhighway. Even then I didn't really pay close attention. It wasn't until 1996 that I got informed and really logged on.
Keep rocking, fellow internet denizen
steve2470
(37,457 posts)If anyone thinks for one second that the big ISP's are going to have mercy on us....
think again. Yes, it will not happen overnight or tomorrow. But gradually, they will start boiling the frog, raising prices and offering special highest speed deals for the richest customers, businesses and websites while relegating the rest of us to the "standard plan". THEY ARE ALL ABOUT PROFIT. It's simple. If they can legally raise profit (and sometimes illegally), they don't care about any kind of morality or customer welfare.
MineralMan
(146,255 posts)pretty much from their starting dates. GO POLITICS! That was my introduction to political discussion groups.
steve2470
(37,457 posts)I thought it was a good service, but I preferred AOL. I never did politics back then, my relatively apolitical period of my younger days.
MineralMan
(146,255 posts)I was using the Internet, too, of course, starting about 1993. Compuserve had its own browser, and I used that for some time, before switching to a stand-alone browser.
My first two business websites were hosted on Compuserve's OurWorld server, and was built with the Compuserve WYSIWYG editor. Then, when Microsoft launched FrontPage, I switched to real Internet hosting. I think that was in 1997. At the time, I had one of the first three websites selling mineral specimens to collectors.
It used to be lots of fun. Now, it's become just another work opportunity for me. Oh well. The excitement is gone forever, now.
lunamagica
(9,967 posts)who felt that way.
steve2470
(37,457 posts)MineralMan
(146,255 posts)For me, the access to like-minded people was the main attraction of those online services, and then the Internet. I gravitated immediately to discussion forums, and have never looked back.
Prior to the Internet, but during the GEnie and Compuserve days, I also ran a very busy BBS that had its own message boards. Since it also supported my shareware software company, it had members from all over the world. It, too, had a political message board.
I can't even count the number of articles I wrote for the computer magazines about modems, online services, communication software, bulletin board software and the like. It was one of my specialties as a freelance writer. I reviewed modems, online services and that software, too. In the modem days, writing about getting connected was a big part of my work for PC World, Compute! and other magazines in the 80s and 90s.
The communications possibilities of the Internet and even those old online services was huge. I don't know how anyone couldn't be excited by the possibilities.
lunamagica
(9,967 posts)the excitement is gone.
I had a subscription to PC World and Internet...I think it was Internet Magazine? I devoured each issue
MineralMan
(146,255 posts)I wrote for them for 12 years during and after that period.
lunamagica
(9,967 posts)blaze
(6,347 posts)I was a diehard TAPCIS user and only gave it up when the format changed at CompuServe and forced my hand.
Made some very good friend's on CServe's LAWSIG forum.
Nice memories.
MineralMan
(146,255 posts)They were very active, and well-moderated. DU reminds me a lot of their main Politics Forum. I'm betting that I'm not the only one here who participated in that CIS forum, either.
My little shareware software company had its own support area on Compuserve, too. It's support forum was fairly busy, since it was a great place to download the shareware programs I created, along with tons of fun freeware stuff.
blaze
(6,347 posts)and was enthusiastically touting the possibilities of the internet and "electronic mail" very early on.
I consider myself a pretty early adapter, but only because my Dad pretty much insisted that my sister and I get on board. Pop
TygrBright
(20,755 posts)Probably in a slightly different form, but it'll amount to the same thing in the end.
sadly,
Bright
steve2470
(37,457 posts)I do think this atrocity will be overturned eventually, but it really sucks we have to go through this periodically unless we get a good law and/or Constitutional Amendment.
It's really great the smarter Republicans are with us. It's not just a "partisan" issue, it's a human issue of access to information and services.
RKP5637
(67,086 posts)airwaves and/or use triangulation to find us! Yep, right back into WWII days with hidden radios/xmitters.
lunamagica
(9,967 posts)I never knew about Prodigy's flat fee. It would have saved me a lot of money
My favorite was CompuServe, and it was so frustrating to have to time myself to use it.
It would be horrific to go back to a per-minute charge. The world has changed so much since then and being able to use the internet 24/7 for a flat-fee has been the norm for years. I can see riots over this.
FarCenter
(19,429 posts)Nor did they use internet technology in the beginning. All but GEnie transitioned to internet technology and interconnections during the early '90s. The first ISP to provide connections to commercial entities appears to have been PSINet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodigy_(online_service)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe#Internet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL#198391:_Early_years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEnie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSINet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet#Use_in_wider_society_1990s_to_early_2000s_(Web_1.0)
csziggy
(34,131 posts)Many companies had message boards where users - often professionals supporting businesses - could interact with technical personnel from major tech companies to find answers.
I hung out on the CompuServe message boards for years. The per minute charges were crippling, but most of us used a wonderful program called TAPCIS (The Access Program for the Compuserve Information Service) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TapCIS). Tapcis allowed users to go online for short bursts - a typical session would let you download message headers and replies to your previous messages. Then you would mark the headers you wanted to read, write replies, go back online, retrieve the marked headers and upload your replies. You could take you time offline, reading threads and writing replies to those, then go back online to upload all those.
Rather than spending hours online reading threads live, I would spend a few minutes a day online with TAPCIS and reading and replying offline. It saved me hundreds of dollars.
Sometime after AOL acquired CompuServe, they upgraded the archaic servers that used the software that TAPCIS could access and the program no longer worked. There is still a community of TAPICS friends but it no longer very active so far as I know.
lunamagica
(9,967 posts)and saw the message that I had replies to my posts
csziggy
(34,131 posts)I remember people who even in the late 1990s who still used MS-DOS machines and TAPCIS to keep in touch.
My husband and I had a subscription to The Source when it was acquired by TAPCIS. The Source had no good message board system or any economical way to access their information. TAPCIS got me hooked on message boards and forums!
blaze
(6,347 posts)I must have had a 300 baud connection at first, because I could read the messages as they downloaded. I'm guessing by the time I hit 2400 baud it was a bit more efficient.
csziggy
(34,131 posts)At the end it was about 5600 - flying speeds!
Our first modem on an Apple ][ was 300 baud with the telephone receiver hookup.The speed was decreased by our rural telephone lines. At one curse down road, there was a stick in the mudpuddle with two cables coming up out of the much wrapped in plastic held in place with duct tape. Every so often someone would run over the stick and we not only lost internet, we had no phone.
These days we have 40 Mbps broadband and stream our TV programs - what a difference thirty five years makes!
RandomAccess
(5,210 posts)sounds --
Egnever
(21,506 posts)LOL about the time I was heavily into dungeons and dragons...
Wee good times.
pecosbob
(7,533 posts)when AOL would block you from that 'other' fledgling sports network called ESPN...AOL produced their own sports news and didn't want you spending time on those other sites. So if I wanted to visit ESPN's site, I couldn't do it on AOL.
RKP5637
(67,086 posts)an Epson dot matrix printer and maybe a 1 Baud (lol) modem.
steve2470
(37,457 posts)RKP5637
(67,086 posts)steve2470
(37,457 posts)RKP5637
(67,086 posts)steve2470
(37,457 posts)JHB
(37,157 posts)Is there a talk.democraticunderground ?
fescuerescue
(4,448 posts)They were basically walled garden paid gardens, but we called them BBS's. They later added internet access, but internet was separate.
I've been on the Internet since late 80's. And used free BBS and paid BBS (the services you spoke of) since the early 80's.
I've never paid a per minute fee for Internet. Ever.
Net Neutrality is a good thing and we need it, but this isn't the argument.
lpbk2713
(42,738 posts)They don't handle changes too well.
Stonepounder
(4,033 posts)300 Baud modems
GEnie
Wildcat BBS
MUDs (Met my wife on a MUD called Barren Realms)
Text based games - ZORK anyone?
My first computer was a TRS-80 with 4k of memory and a cassette player as its boot device. I then got a Radio Shack laptop (actually more of a 'luggable')
Walking into a 'Computer Store' with a different aisle for each 'brand' of computer.
NewJeffCT
(56,828 posts)thinking it was awesome at the time.
NewJeffCT
(56,828 posts)I think that killed them.
I had a 4 letter username in AOL, which was no longer allowed in future versions. However, my username remained valid - maybe it was grandfathered in? I used AOL for email until the early 2000s, and still used it as a backup for several years later until I could get my password reset anymore
Marthe48
(16,904 posts)(lol) and a modem that was supposed to be faster than it was, but ATT didn't have fiber optic cable, so we topped out around 26K.
I still think the sound of a modem connecting is one of the most exciting sounds I ever heard. Not that I want to go back to that. I got a job working from home while we still had the modem. I'd cry because it was so slow. My husband kept after Charter cable and we finally got a cable Internet connection. Huge difference. He ran cable to every room in the house, except the kitchen and dining room-haha, the only reason he didn't run it there was because wireless came along.
I still have AOL, Netscape, Prodigy disks, DOS books, just a huge pile of early Internet material. I remember the Internet telephone book, and I might still have a copy of it somewhere.
Thanks for flashing all those memories
Kablooie
(18,610 posts)They aren't censoring the phone lines. (yet)
(I used GEnie, myself)
stonecutter357
(12,694 posts)Mosby
(16,259 posts)But the action was on the BBSs.
PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)Last edited Fri Dec 15, 2017, 06:58 PM - Edit history (1)
All those monthly charging services were eliminated by competition, which really is more important than "net neutrality"
as net neutrality doesn't address what your monthly Internet costs or what if any data caps you have (data caps
penalize video and are allowed under net neutrality).
Basic LA
(2,044 posts)CS.com. It's sentimental.
brooklynite
(94,356 posts)People weren't willing to pay for the service. And somebody offered something better.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)How I met my wife. A Usenet romance.
Tin and pine newsreaders. All text, no pics. Pre-WWW.
Stinky The Clown
(67,761 posts)ThoughtCriminal
(14,046 posts)Consumers will at best be stuck in 2017. Anything faster, better, new and innovative will cost extra.
And you'll see a constant decrease in value. Sort of like how that box of cupcakes is the same size and price, but now has six cakes instead of eight.