Early internet.

[Cheyne_brewer]

Modems? None of that modern stuff when I started in the late 70s. 300 baud acoustic coupler from Sheffield Uni to UMIST In Manchester. It would have been quicker to drive over with a stack of 8” floppies or punched cards for any more than the simplest of data transfers.

 

[LeeH]

Mine was the BT Pearl;
View attachment 83292

It was analogue so was quickly cloned by some early tech criminals. I was sent one of the first digital phones with a sim card, the mighty Nokia 2110;
View attachment 83293
Battery lasted a week, it also had a new feature called SMS messaging although I didn't know anyone with another digital phone to send any, but I do remember people saying "What's the point in that, when you can just ring someone, it'll never get used".....

This was my first mobile, couldn’t text cross network but didn’t know anybody with a mobile anyway.

Contract was with Orange called Talk15. 15 mins of free calls for 17.50 a month back in 97!

 

[Chippy_Tea]

 

[Chippy_Tea]

ontract was with Orange called Talk15. 15 mins of free calls for 17.50 a month back in 97!

Asked SWMBO who used to pay the bill and she said i was on the same contract.
I remember the signal was patchy round here i guess all the lake district hills didn't help.
I used to work nights in a town 20 miles away and the lads who were finishing their shift as i started mine used to ring and ask me to nip into the 24 hour service station on the edge of town to get milk and biscuits etc when they were running low in the kitchen, looking back it was a bit crap but the buzz i got from having my first mobile i will never forget.

 

[THBF]

I remember a Nokai phone like the one in the photo. I was standing in a Walmart in AL about 1998/99 - this was before everyone had a cell phone. My daughter was on a mission trip with the church and was coming back through France. She was in their hotel room in France and I was standing in a Walmart (you've heard of them, big general store, all types of stuff.). I was looking at the oil for my car and my phone rang. It was my daughter from France. It blew my mind that I was shopping for motor oil in a store and my daughter in France could dial me and it was a very good signal. I knew the time of "Star Trek" has arrived.

 

[MashBag]

I remember the dial up bulletin boards. My first was a suitcase computer with dial up modem. The screen was about 8 or 10 inches and in the green on black print. No images. The first at business was about 1993 when Unix started going to personal computers. I remember being shown the world wide web at work. And being encouraged to use it since was the wave of the future.

I remember dial up bulletin boards.... And 80 column punch cards ... computing on paper.

 

[ruskythegreat]

Mine was the BT Pearl;
View attachment 83292

It was analogue so was quickly cloned by some early tech criminals. I was sent one of the first digital phones with a sim card, the mighty Nokia 2110;
View attachment 83293
Battery lasted a week, it also had a new feature called SMS messaging although I didn't know anyone with another digital phone to send any, but I do remember people saying "What's the point in that, when you can just ring someone, it'll never get used".....

I still have my Nokia 5.1 from Orange - in the original box!

 

[klaus]

My first at work big happening was being able to use the Unix machine and C prompts and get to the weather map showing the radar.
And I remember the 5.25 inch (don't know the cms ) then 3.5 etc. And how the hard drive space is remarkable now.

Did you see 8" disks - early 80s I worked with IBM display writers, the top word processor of the day. My next employer manufactured their own 8" disc "PC", it soon made way for the 5 1/4" own brand workstation but again very soon we had proper PCs with MSDOS!

 

[THBF]

@klaus I did not see the 8 inch disks. I remember saying I was smart enough to come into it shortly after punch cards were used. Ah yes, MSDOS.
So many changes that we've seen.

 

[MashBag]

Did you see 8" disks - early 80s I worked with IBM display writers, the top word processor of the day. My next employer manufactured their own 8" disc "PC", it soon made way for the 5 1/4" own brand workstation but again very soon we had proper PCs with MSDOS!

Yup 8inch disks on a system 38. Exchangeable winchester disk anyone?
IBM 3380

 

[Old Fart At Play]

Yup 8inch disks on a system 38. Exchangeable winchester disk anyone?
IBM 3380

System/38 was easily the best computer system I ever worked on. Thr Control Language was completely intuitive.

 

[Bjorn Toulouse]

3 com modems, replaceable Winchester disks with only one program on them different disk for different days word procesing monday, spreadsheet tuesday... what ever happened to web crawler and Netscape navigator. Loved the AOL chat rooms

 

[THBF]

I just remember surfing the world wide web and before things like Google for searching. And the non-existent filters. I accidently found some interesting photo of pieces of art and such things.
The most remarkable was when I found I could get fed ex tracking numbers to be put in work authorizations by the shipping department. Then we could give the buyer the fed ex number. That started a lot of better customer service.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Did a anyone else here use a Dreamcast console to surf the Web in the early days?