topic Re: Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌ in Community challenges

Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌

Michal_Gebacki — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 13:00:18 GMT

The "Nostalgia" badgeHello, Community friends! This month let's go back in time and reminisce about our very first steps in the web world. How has it all started? Was it some online chat? Or maybe a discussion forum? News portal? We're sure you all remember at least some details!

Share in the comments how your journey with the Internet has started. Feel free to share some screenshots as well!

Every participant of April's Challenge gets 100 bonus points, a unique "Nostalgia" badge, and some priceless opportunity to share & explore other's memories. Sometimes we can be shocked how much time has passed since we've started our vintage PC Computer & tried to connect with the world for the very first time! 🌎

Let me start with my school memory of the late 2000's. It is a Polish, local predecessor of the modern-era social media platforms, Epuls. It was a true thing back in 2007-2008. Despite a quick fall and disappearance in favor of Facebook, the majority of Polish kids born in the late 90's still gonna remember this website very well!

Re: Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌

DanielS — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 13:59:08 GMT

Well, in my early Internet days with not as many popular websites as available today and slow connections, I used it mainly for two purposes email (Hotmail and their 2MB of storage 😂) and gaming with friends/classmates. Mainly Doom or Duke Nukem.

And last but not least Mosaic was the browser of choice then became Netscape:

Re: Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌

andre_vdveen — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 20:22:20 GMT

My 1st ever interaction with a computer was when I was forced to buy one for my then-day job in the newspaper distribution industry, back in 1995: an i386, it was a beast at the time!
I only used it for Lotus 1-2-3 and nothing else...I was too scared to break it or accidentally wipe it 🤣 but not long after, I bought a 56k modem and hooked up my parents' telephone line, much to their dismay and a sudden increase in their telephone bill! The sounds that thing made when connecting...I do NOT miss that, hahaha!

Playing online games never really was my thing and still isn't, but the first game I recall downloading was Delta Force: Land Warrior - I LOVED that game, so much so that I kept a copy and eventually installed it again so that my son could play, more than 20 years later! 😎

Re: Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌

Mike_L — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 12:10:10 GMT

My first interaction was using my mom’s fax telephone line to connect to the internet. Back then in Sweden you had to pay per minute of calling, and my mom was not impressed when the telephone bill a few months later was 200 euros for a single month.

It must have been around 1994 or so. Once connected to the ISP I opened up Mosaic or Netscape on her Mac and entered “magic” into the address bar.

I was into magic the gathering at the time, and had no understanding of search engines such as altavista. Of course that just gave me some generic error message about “domain not found”, so I tried again with some different terms and never got anything. I gave up and probably didn’t try again for another month because apparently there was nothing on the Internet…

Re: Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌

AntonioSousa — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 23:29:21 GMT

Oh my, Nostalgia! Where should I start? OK, it's only going to be about the web, or maybe the Internet? I did start with a Spectrum sometime around 1986, but that doesn't count, as it was only connected to a cassette player 😁

Internet started for me in 1991, with a very interesting class of computer communications. So many new technologies! One of my first feats was sending an email to the teacher impersonating the president of the US. He was not impressed, the lab was a closed network, he must have looked at the originating IP, and starred immediately at me. Caught in the act 😂😂😂

In the following semester, another teacher told us that the future would be something called WWW. We were not impressed 🤣

I finished University in 1993. I had to have an internship, which was mandatory at the time. Switched to Lisbon, and where I landed it was pretty clear: the future was gopher! www? nahhh!

I then went to the Communications Regulator in Portugal. Pretty impressive times, and Portugal was temporarily the second country with the biggest mobile penetration in Europe! Why? Because our fixed lines were so bad! The worst part there? When Management determined that we should disconnect from the Internet! Probably the only institution/organization that I know that did such a thing. A story so bad that I could write a book about it!

And this was all more than 25 years ago. Even before the first page registered by the Internet Archive:
https://web.archive.org/web/19960510144231/http://www.microsoft.com/ie/IE.HTM

Re: Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌

AntonioSousa — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 23:36:59 GMT

Oh, Altavista... I keep remembering why I switched from Altavista to Google at the time. And why I switched from Google some two years ago...

Re: Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌

AntonioSousa — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 23:44:22 GMT

@andre_vdveen

Probably a little beast, no? I bought a 386 in 1989, and it had a 20 MB disk at the time. I could boot Windows and Xenix at the time! What a wonderful machine it was (except the price, I worked all University to pay for it)!

Re: Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌

Mo_Azuz — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 00:24:05 GMT

It all started in 1995 for me, my dad was a professor teaching microbiology and he had a Pentium at home and a Compaq laptop for his work office (which I take full responsibility for destroying it 😂). Let's just say I tried everything possible on these two poor devices whether it is a software or a hardware "modification". I remember the first time I played Doom, Duke Nukem, Command and Conquer: Red Alert and my all time favorite AGE OF EMPIRES (I still play today). My games library (over 600+ games) continues to grow with little to no time for gaming.

My dad was very patient with me trying to convince me to pursue a career in Microbiology and carry his work at that time, so he gave full access to both machines while not allowing any of my 3 older siblings. They could use it for school work only. One night, I was caught playing Resident Evil at 3am and my dad lost it, that was the first time I witnessed a flying laptop (See, I told you I was responsible for destroying it 😆). Today, my family still jokes about my computer shenanigans but I am the first person they'd call if they have any tech related questions.

Re: Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌

jegron — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 06:36:22 GMT

My parents bought me Fifa 2004 on PC. I had 12 years old.

Full of Hype I launched it. It didn't work because the GPU was not powerful enough. So they bought a new GPU. Cost a lot of money.

Full of Hope I launched it. It didn't work because the GPU was not powerful enough.

Full of Frustration I decided I will never ever need for someone to run my computer 🤓

And 10 years later, in 2014, I started the performance monitoring adventure in the professional world 🚀

Re: Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌

kurt_aigner — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 06:56:25 GMT

Oh boy! The good thing about getting old is, that you remember exactly what you did 30 years ago.

In my case, the first touchpoint with the internet was at the University of Salzburg (I pretended to study Computer) Science) in 1992. We were playing with bleeding-edge technology in the WWW building the homepage for the university. If the following pic looks familiar to you, then I'm afraid you are about my age!

I also recall that our professor was pushing hard to get this done, to do "real" stuff again! 😃

Re: Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌

Yosi_Neuman — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 09:40:42 GMT

For me the deal breaker for starting using this WWW thing was .... ICQ

Re: Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌

radek_jasinski — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 10:10:25 GMT

Hi Team,

I remember my beginnings online in the early 2000s in Poland.
I was about 12 years old at the time. My parents installed one of the first network accesses in the housing estate where I lived - I remember the dizzying 128 kbps and weekend game downloads. Then a friend who had a 2X speed CD burner would come over to my home and we would burn those games to discs using the memorable Nero Burning Rom software. Later there was illegal trading on the estate with my friends 🤣.

In those days with friends I played an On-Line game called RedDragon, which was available in Poland and the Czech Republic. The gameplay in Red Dragon online takes place in a fantastic world inhabited by eleven playable races, which differ in their difficulty to lead. Thus, there are different factions in the game, such as humans, elves and dwarves, each with its own unique characteristics and units. The player's task is to develop his state by managing its economy, territorial expansion often requiring fighting battles. An important part of Red Dragon is the association of principalities into coalitions.

A while later I became interested in making websites and I made my first website at the age of 13 still based on Joomla CMS. I remember that this CMS did not require too much knowledge of programming. And so it went on:)

Radek

Re: Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌

pahofmann — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 11:41:41 GMT

I got back into MtG recently, still pretty fun 🙂

Re: Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌

pahofmann — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 11:51:53 GMT

Can't quite remember the first things, probably ICQ and browser games like OGame.

Won't forget the sounds of the 56k modem and angry siblings because the phone line was blocked though 🙂

Re: Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌

Mike_L — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 12:09:23 GMT

I remember it as a very expensive hobby when I was young. That's one of the challenges with growing up; when you're young you have time but no money, when you grow up you have money but no time.

Re: Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌

Mike_L — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 12:12:18 GMT

Delta force was amazing. Voxel technology was such a game changer for render distance. I remember looking down the scope of a sniper rifle towards 1 pixel moving around far, far away and trying to calculate how high you had to aim to make the shot.

Re: Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌

Mike_L — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 12:15:42 GMT

LAN parties with Duke Nukem was a highlight of my childhood 🙂

Re: Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌

radek_jasinski — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 12:16:32 GMT

OGame - how many nights I spent with this game 🙂

Re: Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌

Mike_L — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 12:21:00 GMT

I still remember my ICQ number to this day. If anyone wants to chat I'm on 144041737 https://icq.im/144041737 😂

Re: Take the Nostalgia Challenge! ‌‌🕒‌

Mike_L — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 12:22:51 GMT

Text based browser games were great. I met my missus more than 20 years ago through Orkfia (a spin-off from the more popular Utopia).