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Take the Nostalgia Challenge! β€Œβ€ŒπŸ•’β€Œ

Michal_Gebacki
Community Team
Community Team

The "Nostalgia" badgeThe "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!

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49 REPLIES 49

DanielS
DynaMight Leader
DynaMight Leader

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 πŸ˜‚) and gaming with friends/classmates. Mainly Doom or Duke Nukem.

DanielS_0-1681739330797.png

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

DanielS_1-1681739707767.png

 

The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.

LAN parties with Duke Nukem was a highlight of my childhood πŸ™‚

Mike

andre_vdveen
DynaMight Champion
DynaMight Champion

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 πŸ€£ 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! πŸ˜Ž

andre_vdveen_0-1681762729206.jpeg

 

@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)!

Antonio Sousa

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.

Mike

Mike_L
Dynatrace Guru
Dynatrace Guru

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 β€œmagic” 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 β€œdomain 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…

Mike

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...

Antonio Sousa

I got back into MtG recently, still pretty fun πŸ™‚

Dynatrace Certified Master, AppMon Certified Master - Dynatrace Partner - 360Performance.net

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.

Mike

AntonioSousa
DynaMight Guru
DynaMight Guru

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 πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚

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

AntonioSousa_0-1681773940480.png

Antonio Sousa

Mo_Azuz
Dynatrace Mentor
Dynatrace Mentor

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 πŸ˜‚). 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 πŸ˜†).  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. 

jegron
DynaMight Pro
DynaMight Pro

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 πŸ€“

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

Observability Engineer at Phenisys - Dynatrace Professional

kurt_aigner
Dynatrace Champion
Dynatrace Champion

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

 

OnceUponATime.jpg

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!
NCSA_Mosaic_Browser_Screenshot.png

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

 

Director of Product Management @ Dynatrace
That means I'm better at delegation than doing actual work!

Yosi_Neuman
DynaMight Guru
DynaMight Guru

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

Yosi_Neuman_0-1681810706096.png

 

dynatrace certificated professional - dynatrace master partner - Matrix Soft Ware Division - Israel

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

Mike

Very vivid memories πŸ˜

Anyone remembering the ICQ sound uh oh🀣

radek_jasinski
DynaMight Guru
DynaMight Guru

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.

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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

Have a nice day!

πŸ˜‚πŸ€£Nero Burning Rom is one of the best names in the industry, also like the user Dynoobtracer.

The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.

pahofmann
DynaMight Guru
DynaMight Guru

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 πŸ™‚

Dynatrace Certified Master, AppMon Certified Master - Dynatrace Partner - 360Performance.net

OGame - how many nights I spent with this game πŸ™‚

Have a nice day!

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).

Mike

Don't know which was more horrible: a modem sound or the ZX Spectrum & the tape recorder...

BTW, a close friend told me some 30 years ago that he knew a guy, that humming and whistling, could negotiate a handshake with a 300 bps modem...

Antonio Sousa

AgataWlodarczyk
Community Team
Community Team
 

oh... IRC πŸ˜’πŸ˜…

irc.jpeg

⭐ When passion meets people magic and innovation happen. ⭐

Real users used text-based IRC in the Linux shell (for instance Irssi)

 
 
 

Radoslaw_Szulgo_3-1682419367106.png

 

Senior Product Manager,
Dynatrace Managed expert

dannemca
DynaMight Guru
DynaMight Guru

Saw here IRC (I used mIRC), ICQ (lost my account attached to an old email I could not retrieve, hotmail btw), but no one said MSN yet!!

Here in Brazil, MSN were fever in 2000's, and later on, Orkut, my first interaction with social midia and communities.

I remember that before social midias (twitter, facebook, instagram, etc) explodes, the communities forums were the place I visit most. These were very similar to our community here. I used to visit 2 music bands forums, KornBrasil (Korn fan base in Brazil) and TheArmpit (Limp Bizkit fan base in Brazil), to my age, what is more nostalgic than New Metal? 🀣

These are all gone now, the monopoly of social midia take the users away. Lucky us, that our community here is meant to people who wants to learn/teach and not only spend (waste) time on internet.

 

Site Reliability Engineer @ Kyndryl

cesarsaravia
Dynatrace Mentor
Dynatrace Mentor

Wow! It hasn't been a long time ago, but I started in approximately 2004 or 2005, I remember creating my first and unique @hotmail.com account.  
After creating my first email account, I started using the MSN chat app on Windows XP. I think that was the most remote idea I've had about starting the WWW.
In the 3 next years, I started to study programming with VB6.0 .NET.

cesarsaravia_2-1681845972168.png

 

 

-CΓ©sar S. - LATAM Solutions Architect

Shirai
Helper

I first became involved with computers in the mid-1980s when I was a university student, but I remember being introduced to the Internet around 1995. What left an impression on me was a BBS called newsgroup (Usenet). We researched work issues (comp.*) and talked about hobbies (rec.*).

In retrospect, newsgroups may have been the starting point for SNS.
I remember using an OS/2 PC to access newsgroups at the time.

I found a screenshot for os/2. nostalgic.

Shirai_0-1682416774612.png

 

T.Shirai IIM Corp. Osaka Japan

Deekshacp
Dynatrace Participant
Dynatrace Participant

I started my journey when I was in High school. At that time, it was not even 2G. It was the DSL era. I still remember my first cell phone with GPRSβ€”opening google.com and wondering what it does by searching for chocolates. 

theharithsa
Dynatrace Champion
Dynatrace Champion

My journey of Internet started all the way back in 2005. I started using 2G cellphone and found my first ever site that is Wikipedia. First thing I did there was, I searched the term Astronomy (Because it is till date my favourite subject). Later I told my teacher about this and asked him that to write an essay on Hepatitis B. Then finally, I wrote an essay on Nano Technology and helped my teacher to give seminar for his Post Graduation Studies. 

It was fun for me that time where I was waiting for 100MB file to download at 10 Kbps whole night -:)

Love more, hate less; Technology for all, together we grow.

Karolina_Linda
Community Team
Community Team

Oh wow! I can't remember the exact year from the 90's, but I saw the 😱 INTERNET πŸ˜± for the first time in a public library πŸ“–

My dad was taking my sister and me there, to the Gdansk city center, so we could experience the newest technology πŸ˜ƒ

When there was finally an opportunity to have the Internet at home, this is the sound that will stay with me forever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsNaR6FRuO0

Keep calm and build Community!
EDIT: November 2020 wow this really blew up over the years. I have made a direct download available here https://freesound.org/people/wtermini/sounds/546450/ enjoy Also back in 2012 a wonderful poster was made by Oona RΓ€isΓ€nen http://www.windytan.com/2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup-pictured.html ...

florent_duchate
Dynatrace Champion
Dynatrace Champion

For me it started at University in 1995. The teacher told us, here you go, this is the internet. You have 1 hour and left us in front of computers...

It was on Netscape 1 (I think) and extremely slow! I decided to search for sites about The lord of the rings. In those days, images would load line by line so we had to be extremely patient. πŸ˜…

I wasn't impressed at all and thought "what's the point, this stuff will never catch on"...

1995. Reminds me of me trying to download some audio files from an FTP server (likely it was ftp.funet.fi) it was just .au file as the MP3 did not exist yet. 

Sure images on the web were mostly interlaced versions of GIF files so we had the feeling something is going on πŸ˜

Certified Dynatrace Master | Alanata a.s., Slovakia, Dynatrace Master Partner

ChadTurner
DynaMight Legend
DynaMight Legend

This reminds me of the days back in High school where we would use AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) 

ChadTurner_0-1682004425275.png

We used this right up until it was blocked and we then started to use AIM Express! 

ChadTurner_1-1682004506640.png

those were the days! if you want to reminisce, check out the time machine:https://archive.org/web/ 

 

ChadTurner_2-1682004697083.png

 

 

-Chad

PhilB
Observer

Using Windows 95 in 1996 and playing a game called Cyberia!

PhilB_0-1682090987137.png

And later Starcraft and Starcraft Broodwar. Back when "expansions" were full games! 

Going to gamefaqs.com as if I were reading the daily paper.

PhilB_1-1682091178825.png

Going to spacejam.com/1996/jam.htm
Which is up and running and hasn't changed at all!

Go Phil

Dynatrace Certified Professional

AurelienGravier
DynaMight Pro
DynaMight Pro

My first experience was on an Amstrad pc1512 with 512 Ko of Ram and essentially for playing double dragon !

Afterwards, I assembled my first pc at 16 years old with the last available os "win98" and my 1st internet connection 56kb with an AOL offer with 50 free hours !!

Good to back to basics : AOL Instant Messenger like you @ChadTurner , caramail chat, winamp, age of empires and all my divx with all existing decoders. I remember my mum in fury because she wasn't able to make a call.

unsplash_9p-dsbtsyga-1.jpg

 

 

Observability consultant - Dynatrace Associate/Pro/Services certified

This reminds me of listening to Backstreet Boys. Especially Everybody, and Show me the meaning

Love more, hate less; Technology for all, together we grow.

Radoslaw_Szulgo
Dynatrace Guru
Dynatrace Guru

And my story has started in 1990, when my mother purchased our first personal computer (PC) -> IBM x286. Same as first @AntonioSousa 's computer - had 20MB of disk. So the decision was either to install Windows 3.11 with 10 floppy disks or keep running MS-DOS with few games. 

 

Radoslaw_Szulgo_4-1682419595319.png

 

The first game I recall was of course prince of persia! 

 

Radoslaw_Szulgo_6-1682419821899.png

 

And many many others..  Nevertheless, I already knew computers are my future - I was 4 years old then! Six years later in 1996, I took the first computer and internet training and connected first time to the internet! The first browser was IE 3.0!

 

Radoslaw_Szulgo_8-1682420379590.png

 

I still remember the excitement of searching for anything you can imagine using different search engines like yahoo.com, altavista.com, Infoseek, or MSN. When I write this, I think I have the same excitement using Chat GPT! Do you as well? 

 

 

 

Senior Product Manager,
Dynatrace Managed expert

Yes, ChatGPT is a game changer!

Antonio Sousa

We will see which way it will go πŸ™‚
I think the biggest application of AI like ChatGPT could be in the medical industry:)

Have a nice day!

Malaik
DynaMight Champion
DynaMight Champion

Hahahah,

Nostalgic:
Started with Caramail and Messenger:

Malaik_0-1682848525264.pngMalaik_1-1682848552462.jpeg

 

I remember when want to use internet at home, no Wifi available, Fix phone should be unplugged to use the cable in the PC.

New generation dont know this.

πŸ˜„

 

Sharing Knowledge

islam_zidan
Champion

Nostalgia πŸ˜€

I started with MSN messenger for chatting and red alert as a daily game πŸ˜Ž

 

Slider-img1b.jpg6179a66e5f9cc70024c6cee8_what-happened-to-msn-messenger1 (1) (1).jpeg

 

 

Dynatrace Certified Professional - Dynatrace Partner - Yourcompass.ca

Kenny_Gillette
DynaMight Leader
DynaMight Leader

My Nostalgia will start with before Internet was used at home – Tandy 1000 EX. This will start my love with computers.  My dad told my mom he needs to read the instructions before we setup.  Did my mom and I listen?  No way!

 

Kenny_Gillette_0-1682940877523.png

 

 

I got addicted to games real quick that were from Sierra like Kings Quest, Police Quest and Space Quest.  Look at those graphics. 

Kenny_Gillette_1-1682940877533.png

 

 

 

My first interaction with the Internet was in college and sending emails to other people at colleges or looking up different items on the Internet.  Amazing how far we have come!

Dynatrace Certified Professional

Mohamed_Hamdy
DynaMight Champion
DynaMight Champion

I remember that I used ICQ then MSN Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger using dial-up connection πŸ˜€

Certified Dynatrace Professional | Certified Dynatrace Services Delivery - Observability & CloudOps | Dynatrace Partner - yourcompass.ca

AntonPineiro
DynaMight Guru
DynaMight Guru

Hi,

As others here, MSN Messenger comes to my mind:

AntonPineiro_0-1683108849222.png

Best regards

❀️ Emacs ❀️ Vim ❀️ Bash ❀️ Perl

richard_guerra
Advisor

1986?

Atari 800XL with a Zenith Mono monitor, Epson FX-85 printer, and a 300 baud modem that I'd dial to various BBS. compuserve.com email address. No hard drive - software was loaded from 5-1/4" floppy disk.

 

IMG_20230503_172026887.jpg

PedroDeodato
DynaMight Pro
DynaMight Pro

Well, I hadn't have the privilege of experience the early days of the Internet, so my nostalgia is quite short, when compared to so many historical events here πŸ˜›

My first experience was with the old Hotmail, when I created my first email account at school!

PedroDeodato_1-1683643182560.png

 

As with many here, all things back then revolved around fun & games (literally!), and here in Portugal a really popular website was Jogos10 ("Games10"):

PedroDeodato_3-1683643508055.png

 

And, of course, Miniclip:

PedroDeodato_4-1683643551011.png

Best regards, Pedro Deodato

jarinmusarrat
Dynatrace Guide
Dynatrace Guide

Didn't have the opportunity to use Internet that time but had a big fat computer in the house where I would randomly play games and watch videos. It started from this clippy. then there was sheep.exe. MS paint was another wonder for me and never ending fun with talk it. Also who else loved playing the windows version of DX- Ball?  

jarinmusarrat_0-1683730925686.png

jarinmusarrat_1-1683731144045.png

jarinmusarrat_2-1683731236041.png

jarinmusarrat_3-1683731331875.png

jarinmusarrat_4-1683731758068.png

 

Your post made me miss Paint, that's where it all started πŸ˜„

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