My first computer was an AST Bravo 486, that I got in 1995. It
came with MS-DOS, MS Windows 3.1, and a 28.8.Kpbs modem. I
managed to have some fun with that rig. In those days, companies
would send out printed catalogs of shareware programs, that came on
floppy disks. Since you would get a good discount if you order more
programs, a few of us would "go in" together and make a big order.
It was always a blast when the floppies would arrive, with the
larger programs bound together by rubber bands, since they took more
than one floppy to install.
I had a friend that came over and installed a copy of Windows 95 on
that machine. He also had some extra RAM lying around, so I went
from, I think, 8MB to 12MB of memory. I also upgraded to modem to a
56k, so I was ready to blaze!
I started connecting to local Bulletin Board Systems, or BBSs, using
the dial-up modem. I managed to find one that rarely had busy signals,
and a nice group of users, so I stuck around there for a while.
The BBS gave me an email address, and they would "batch" emails and
send them out at around four in the morning. People were a lot less
stressed about messaging in those days. I kind of miss that pace.
I had a blast on the BBSs back then. There were always friendly
folks in the local chat rooms, and you could even meet them in
person, if you hit it off. They also had gateways to gopher, Archie,
IRC, and other BBSs that were linked via FidoNet.
Eventually, the local BBS started offering World Wide Web access.
They did it by allowing you to download an executable program
that was bundled with MS Internet Explorer. After you installed it,
you would be able to dial in and browse http pages. It was $10 a
month, which you sent to the BBS Sysop's address. I don't remember
exactly how many hours a month you got for the ten bucks, but I
remember having to keep track of my daily time online. If you went
over your hours, you were cut off from .www access, and could only
use the BBS until the first of the next month.
I used the BBS for .www access until a local ISP started offering
"unlimited" access for $19.95 a month. I had to decide between
paying $10.00 a month for around 100-150 hours, or double that for
"unlimited". I think I went with the ISP, so that I did not have to
keep track of my time online.
The nice thing about the ISP, is that they gave you a "homepage"
area, where you could FTP in, and edit html pages. The space was
very limited, so I did not do much with it. I started building web
sites on a server called "Cybercities", which was like Geocities,
but better. They went out of business, as did many of the sites that
I built sites on back then.
I think that everything went downhill on the .www after local ISPs,
and corporations like AOL and CompuServe started marketing the hell
out of the "Information Superhighway". Around that time, people
started flooding the net with banal, unimaginative content. Many of
them did not observe proper netiquette, like the folks did on the
BBSs and on gopher and IRC.
The situation has deteriorated substantially since then, with the
rise of Google, Facebook, "Social Media" and all of the insipid
clickbait headlines and tracking.
There is hope on the horizon, however. I am very excited about all
of the developments that have been happening on gopher, the
pubnixes, and the small internet in general. There are a lot of
great people putting out a lot of great content now. It reminds me
of the early days, when the internet was fun. That is why I say:
