The first steps of the internet...

[Bricktop]

[cc]

Interesting stuff



Trying to recall, I got my first home / business PC about 1980, an IBM I think ... used a spreadsheet and a few minor programs .. about 1987 added an IBM text program. That machine cost about 2000 US and because I wanted a wide printer, it was over 2000



In 1990 we went with a  new machine AutoCAD .. crude, very slow to load but intriguing and very useful ... In 91 we used Gary Player golf design firm as a consultant (they were the first to use for golf course design)  .. they gave us files of some of their work so we could do a 4 page  article in the AutoCAD bible at the time, Cadalyst Paper Magazine (now http://www.cadalyst.com/">http://www.cadalyst.com/)  .. our claim to fame - (I don't see archived articles on their website)

At that time we used it for the water systems .... later came hydraulic analysis software for calculations etc.



Got a new machine in 1998  .. my first internet use ... and the rest is history

[Frood]

As kids we had access to father's 186 laptop then 286 then 386 along with the dialup supplied by his employer.

[Anonymous]

I got my first desktop after I registered my first email address in the late 90's. I still drank then , so I can't remember what I used it for.

[Bricktop]

First used a computer in 1983 for..er...police work. The 10 MEGAbit hard drive cost us $10,000, and it took 40 minutes to load a file. It used CP/M as its OS, as MS-DOS wasn't widely installed then.



However, it did have a crude word processor much like the first Wordstar, and I saw the future.



You wouldn't believe how many senior officers saw no future in computer technology.

[Anonymous]

First used a computer in 1983 for..er...police work. The 10 MEGAbit hard drive cost us $10,000, and it took 40 minutes to load a file. It used CP/M as its OS, as MS-DOS wasn't widely installed then.



However, it did have a crude word processor much like the first Wordstar, and I saw the future.



You wouldn't believe how many senior officers saw no future in computer technology.

I don't remember a pre MS-DOS world.

[Bricktop]

CP/M preceded MS-DOS, although MS-DOS was pretty much the same OS.



All command line driven. No interface but a green screen.



To start a program it was "run wordstar".



Copy, delete and move are all pretty obvious. "cdir" was create a directory (folder in modern parlance), "cd" was change directory...and so on.



The thing was you needed to know all those commands, so the OS manual was always close at hand.



It was like riding a horse and carriage compared to todays modern cars.

[Blurt]

First PC I bought was a 386 in 1993, fully loaded with MS-DOS 6, Microsoft Windows 3.1, Microsoft Word 6.0, and Netscape Navigator. It had a gorgeous 256-colour SVGA display, a 4X CD-ROM, a 14,400-baud modem card, a 120Mb hard drive, and a whopping 4Mb of RAM (the extra 2 Mb adding over $200 to the machine's $3,200 price tag).



That year, I discovered a shareware game called DOOM and a CD-ROM game called Myst. My grades suffered for a semester or so.



Also in 1993, I created my first e-mail account, surfed my first BBS, and first set up subscriptions to listservs and newsgroups.



My very first contact with personal computers, though, was, as in Leo's case, through my workplace (green prompts, blinking cursors, and command lines, indeed! only ours were orange).



A bygone era.

[Anonymous]

I used internet cafes and the library until I saved money from my part time job at Canadian Tire and bought one in 1996.

[Anonymous]

I remember my parents bought my sisters and I an Intel with a pentium processor in the early 90's. I played DOOM on it.

[Anonymous]

We've been using them in the patch for twenty five years at home and overseas. I bought my first home computer when i was living in Qatar.It was a Compaq Presario 2200. It had 16 MB of EDO DRAM that was expandable. I think the year was 97.

[Bricktop]

My first computer had 128 KILOBYTES of ram, and a 800 kb floppy disc drive. Hard drives were far too expensive for home computers.



Oddly, it also had a ROM drive...very similar to the cartridges used in early nintendos. You could buy software on a ROM cartridge that would load rapidly. I was surprised the idea didn't catch on.

[Anonymous]

My first computer had 128 KILOBYTES of ram, and a 800 kb floppy disc drive. Hard drives were far too expensive for home computers.



Oddly, it also had a ROM drive...very similar to the cartridges used in early nintendos. You could buy software on a ROM cartridge that would load rapidly. I was surprised the idea didn't catch on.

I remember that.

[Odinson]

I got my first computer back in early 2000s.



It had internet connection.

[Anonymous]

When did everyone give up dial up..



We got high speed before we moved to Kazakhstan for one year.,



I believe it was 2002.