What is so ancient only an Internet veteran can remember? • Hacker News Board

Going to someone else's house and seeing a 17" CRT monitor running in 800x600 resolution (no! don't change that! I like it that the letters are big!) and running Internet Explorer as the only browser, with the window half obscured by a stack of "toolbars".

Oh, you meant ancient? Using a borrowed userid to access a VAX at the university to browse Usenet and use FTP servers. No web or even gopher yet, so your guide was FTP directories published in Usenet. And a T1 link (1.5Mbps) was fast. From the university to the world that is. Your personal dialup was good if it was 2400bps.

Re: What is so ancient only an Internet veteran can remember?

#27

Post by dekhn » Mon, Mar 14, 2022, 2:07 PM UTC

The day the email came through that said they were switching arpanet to TCP/IP. I was 10 at the time.

Re: What is so ancient only an Internet veteran can remember?

#28

Post by gbeeson » Mon, Mar 14, 2022, 2:08 PM UTC

Coupler modems

Re: What is so ancient only an Internet veteran can remember?

#29

Post by MarkusWandel » Mon, Mar 14, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

Here's another one. Asking a computer on the other side of the planet what time it is and getting an answer back immediately, in Japanese Standard Time. Whoa. This was on IBM's internal mainframe network when I was a co-op student there back in 1986/7. The world was a lot bigger place then. I still haven't quite gotten used to video calls with relatives on other continents being free and only a couple of finger taps to set up on your handheld device.

Re: What is so ancient only an Internet veteran can remember?

#30

Post by fractallyte » Mon, Mar 14, 2022, 5:20 PM UTC

I still have my CompuServe email address... and it works!