Do you remember your first computer network experiences?

[Archae]

I do.

1994, I was on the RIME network through a local BBS.

When that BBS went *PIF* in 1996 I got on the Fidonet through another BBS.

I know Fidonet is still (barely) active, but haven't heard anything about the RIME network.

(And the Fidonet forums were fun, especially the Fidonet "Holysmoke" forum, which was described as a "religious food fight.&quot

http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/quotes.htm

[OriginalGeek]

1. My son and I ran a color64 BBS

on his Commodore64 in the late 80s. We had a second phone line put in so TWO whole people could be online at one time! Magic!

We were also on Q-Link before it became AOL.

[Lochloosa]

2. My Father worked for GE in the early 80's. Used to. "Talk " to people in Sweden

[Scuba]

3. Early 80's I installed Novel V1.3. The documentation stated that I should boot the server before ..

... installing the network card. I pent hours on the phone with Novel getting nowhere. No one there was willing to say the documentation was right or wrong. Finally, I chose to install the card while the server was powered off, then boot it.

I never saw any documentation from any vendor before or since that suggested installing a card in a live box. Since my method worked, I've not regretted deviating from the documentation.

[WhoIsNumberNone]

4. Prodigy. Arguing with teenyboppers about whether or not New Kids On The Block sucked.

The high point was when Oderous Urungus joined the discussion to point out that they were biodegradable.

[csziggy]

5. Early 80s with an Apple ][ and a 300 baud modem

Through the Florida Library System we could get to various computerized library catalogs that were set up for interlibrary loans. My husband was research Macao and ended up in the Macao National Library catalog. Unfortunately, we were never able to find the way back to it.

When we changed to a PC in 1986, we signed up for The Source which was our first exposure to BBS (bulletin board systems) the forerunners of forums. The Source was acquired by CompuServe when they began expanding so we ended up on CompuServe.

Back then Compuserve charged by the minute for connection time. Some really cool people created a program called TAPCIS (The Access Program for the Compuserve Information Service - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TapCIS) that let you go online, download the message headers, drop off, mark the message threads you wanted to read, and go back for downloading. Then you could read and reply to the threads, then go online to upload your responses. It sounds klunky but it cut the actual online time to minutes per day rather than hours and made it affordable with 14k or slower modems.

TAPCIS also threaded the messages so you could easily follow discussions as they split into different sub-comments, something many forums today still don't do well.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. In the early '80s I worked for the state court system

and we used an early version of Westlaw. It was better than plowing through law books (though we did a lot of that, too), but it was very, very s l o w. I think we had a 1200-baud modem, and only a couple of people could use the system at a time.

[El Supremo]

7. Compuserve.

Early 90's or before?