The Good ol' days

potatolord · 5 Oct 2020 at 18:26

Theophany said:
Hell yeah! They used to give away CDs on magazines advertising something like 100 free hours. I must've had like 50 different freeserve email addresses signing up to those.

I didn't realise that it was only free whilst you were on Freeserve's homepage and my Dad wasn't too impressed at a £200 phone bill.

I didn't realise 1p a minute adds up to Quite A Lot over a month or two of heavy usage. The mrs had a right moan at me over that.

Nasher · 5 Oct 2020 at 20:35

I had a free one for ages, one of the freephone services by using someone else's dial up account lol

ISPs were quite sloppy back then.

Freakbro · 5 Oct 2020 at 20:51

Yea, waiting for 6 o'clock for the phone going to 1p a minute to play Close Combat 3 in a league/ladder system and still getting £200 phone bills lol

And the voice coms was ringing your mate while holding your mobile with your shoulder

Deleted member 77746 · 6 Oct 2020 at 08:12

sanaxe1 said:
Can anybody remember Freeserve? Was my first Internet provider.

Was that with the frog modem?

MookJong · 6 Oct 2020 at 08:19

When I was at college, "GOLD" CDs would do the rounds. They were basically a collection of Warez applications, games and bits and bobs off the internet all downloaded and packaged onto a CD-ROM usually with a menu system that would unrar then unzip then unrar and so on.

Illegal, a load of the content usually didn't work properly, the whole thing was shady and nefarious, but in an age of 28.8 and 33.3 modems in 1996 a marvel.

My first modem was a 33.3 in 1997 and one of the first things I tried to download was the Shadow Warriors Shareware demo. I'm pretty sure it was 12MB and I never actually successfully did it even after hours and hours of trying.

sanaxe1 · 6 Oct 2020 at 08:33

I used to have "BLOBBY" disks which would be full of games and apps..

Theophany · 6 Oct 2020 at 10:01

I downloaded Metal Gear Solid for PC from GOG.com the other day as it was on offer, reminded me of the agony of trying to download the ~100MB demo of it over dial up with a download manager as the task spanned multiple nights.

The latest Call of Duty game clocks in at over 200GB. How far we have come.

DanTheMan · 6 Oct 2020 at 11:17

Wow, download managers, I forgot about them!

It really is amazing how far we've come in so little time. I was lucky enough that my first home Internet connection in 2003 was 512k broadband and I thought that was amazing as I'd only ever used 56k in the library and at a friend's house before.

I remember going to the library specifically to read a forum for an MMO I played back then and simply being amazed that I could speak to somebody in another country. The thought of being able to actually see them never crossed my mind!

I remember most forums had the equivalent of a rogue's gallery and it always fascinated me that such a varied bunch of people had come together over a game or a hobby. Nowadays with instagram, I've seen more pictures of people before I even know their personality which I find far less interesting.

Efour · 6 Oct 2020 at 11:34

BTs manta ray 512kb ADSL usb modem destroyed my mind and lowered my phone bills by about 200 quid....

Ultima online on a 56k modem was hardcore expensive without an 0800 ISP

Jamauk · 6 Oct 2020 at 11:43

Ah, the sound of a dial up modem.

Then when I got NTL broadband at 512kb/sec, I'd get sent a link from friends in school via MSN Messenger to download something as I had the quickest connection, burn it to a CD and take it in the next day. Also when there was with dial up and NTL broadband cable having it on one PC and a 10Mb/Sec network that was shared across the network, going to turn the PC on and using it at another over the network. Then I remember getting a router so I could move the USB connected modem off the one PC it was connected to and use the network socket on it, then I didn't have to turn one PC on to use the internet in my bedroom.

As for gaming, I doubt it works now, I've not tried it, Age of Empires, and then Age of Mythology, then the Titans Expansion. That would be another use for MSN messenger, get in from school and the simple message, AOM?

As for sites, Yahoo Auctions springs to mind, you would buy or sell something and send/receive a cheque in the post. Did seem so much more genuine than eBay, I'd often sell things, one auction ended for way less than expected and this guy sent me another cheque in the post after I'd posted it out because it had sold for less than expected and he didn't feel right getting it for that price. I seem to remember there wasn't a sellers fee, then there was the online payment thing before PayPal.

I think with the likes of Yahoo Auctions, because it wasn't moderated in the same way as eBay the buyers and sellers had to be a bit more genuine on there.

Jamauk · 6 Oct 2020 at 11:46

DanTheMan said:
Wow, download managers, I forgot about them!

It really is amazing how far we've come in so little time. I was lucky enough that my first home Internet connection in 2003 was 512k broadband and I thought that was amazing as I'd only ever used 56k in the library and at a friend's house before.

I remember going to the library specifically to read a forum for an MMO I played back then and simply being amazed that I could speak to somebody in another country. The thought of being able to actually see them never crossed my mind!

I remember most forums had the equivalent of a rogue's gallery and it always fascinated me that such a varied bunch of people had come together over a game or a hobby. Nowadays with instagram, I've seen more pictures of people before I even know their personality which I find far less interesting.

At school over the summer holidays they had a fiber connection installed, and it was connected to one PC in the library, you could book to use it, but only if you were a 6th form student in a free period. People, myself included would book it and not have a clue what to do on there. This was at a time when a 28.8kb/sec modem was all I had at home!

The frustrated parent that either wanted to use the phone and couldn't or would be on the phone and the dial up tone would interrupt conversation!

Theophany · 6 Oct 2020 at 11:54

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/articles/current_0800_access/

BT Internet (Active)
Offers Free Weekend access. Monthly Charge is £11.75.
Problems: Occasional problems with slow routers.

Some things never change.

Kol · 6 Oct 2020 at 12:07

Ha, the days of going 'on the internet' and then not knowing what you wanted to look at, but the excitement of being on it.

I remember my mate at college was the first to get a cable modem and we'd head to his and download music during lunch, then as he had a Sony NetMD minidisc we could burn (well transfer over usb) to minidisc before we had to go back. It was great, I had a full minidisc for the journey home.

My next fascination was discovering the sheer speed of the connection in the library at Uni. I think we had 10Mbps in our student flat, which was sufficient but one morning I forgot I had newsleecher running before putting my laptop to sleep and heading in, getting to the library, plugging in and then seeing newsleecher having to 'pause' because the connection was so much faster than my poor HDD.

pingwing · 6 Oct 2020 at 12:15

The classic one was unlocking the HL2 files from the dvd over a dial up modem, that took something like 8-10 hours and a strange explanation why I had to stay up and re-dial up the internet in the middle of the night... Broadband hitting the village a few months later was a revelation, my entire GCSE revision was CS source.

physichull said:
People also used to link their Windows Media Player to MSN Messenger so that along with your "online status" it would say what song you were listening to. Yet another tool to make you look "cool" in the online world if you listened to all the latest tunes!

Many a hilarious moment of people forgetting if you linked it to Winamp and then watched a questionable movie you'd be broadcasting it across msn...

MookJong · 6 Oct 2020 at 12:31

sanaxe1 said:
I used to have "BLOBBY" disks which would be full of games and apps..

Oh my god I had totally forgotten about the Blobby CDs!!!

Nasher · 6 Oct 2020 at 12:35

I remember pirate game compilation floppies from the Atari ST era. I dont think anyone actually paid for games back then

EMarkM · 6 Oct 2020 at 12:50

Kol said:
Ha, the days of going 'on the internet' and then not knowing what you wanted to look at, but the excitement of being on it.

Ha!

I remember spending minutes at a time just connected to the AOL home screen, with no other purpose in mind than simply "being", "existing", whatever - perhaps hoping that either someone would spot me or that something magical would happen.

HA HA!

Chrisc · 6 Oct 2020 at 12:53

sanaxe1 said:
Can anybody remember Freeserve? Was my first Internet provider.

I think i jumped between freeserve and compuserve. I vaguely remember getting discs on magazines which would give you discounting ISP rates.

Chrisc · 6 Oct 2020 at 12:56

Freakbro said:
Yea, waiting for 6 o'clock for the phone going to 1p a minute to play Close Combat 3 in a league/ladder system and still getting £200 phone bills lol

And the voice coms was ringing your mate while holding your mobile with your shoulder

6pm onwards was free with BT IIRC. I didnt mind as we had allocated times between me and my sister (4yrs younger) she had from getting home from school to 6pm. Then bang, i log onto the internet. I think i remember getting in trouble because i connected at 17:59 and I was charged for it.

MookJong · 6 Oct 2020 at 13:04

I was a prolific Team Fortress classic player, while on freeserve. I would try and limit to a few games on a Saturday afternoon (my parents both worked a Saturday) hoping my dad wouldn't notice the phone bill, but I soon got rumbled.