Post by Charles Traynor on Oct 5, 2022 17:59:58 GMT
I was in my cellar last week and found a couple of the modems I had once used back in the day.
Before I had ever heard of the World Wide Web I had been swapping pirated Amiga games online through BBS systems. A couple of BBS names I remember in my local area (it cost a lot to be online in the late 80s early 90s) were British Empire (later busted by military police) and The Secret Garden. There were many others but the passage of time makes their memory indistinct now.
Eventually I took the dive and signed up to CompuServe (this involved phoning a nearby big city with full phone costs and a monthly subscription fee). That was a crazy time. There was so much good stuff on the CompuServe groups and Netscape Navigator software came as part of the package giving access to the World Wide Web. To be honest I spent more time in the CompuServe groups than in the WWW for the first few months when I first began using the service.
Eventually it was only a matter of time before I had my own website. Even today I take a juvenile pride in having that first paid for website kicked off the Internet before the end of the 90s. I was told some of the content of the site was illegal in my country and needed to be removed. I didnโt back down. I believe the real reason they binned me is because I had an original contract with no data volume restrictions. Then when I hit the big time with videos on my site they made me pay the ultimate price. They also lied that I would not get my money back if I refused to back down.
Books I purchased from Amazon after having already owned a short lived but very successful Website.
The first is a Supra 2400 plus which was the first modem I ever owned. The second is US Robotics Sportster Flash. I also had a Supra v32 fax modem which went in the bin years ago during a purge on clutter (cellars are not places to store things one will never use again). I donโt even remember owning the Sportster. I did a quick Google search and found it could manage the 57k standard, which would explain why it replaced the Supra v32.
This got me thinking back to a golden age before the unwashed rabble of this world came online to swap pictures of their genitals with each other.
Before I had ever heard of the World Wide Web I had been swapping pirated Amiga games online through BBS systems. A couple of BBS names I remember in my local area (it cost a lot to be online in the late 80s early 90s) were British Empire (later busted by military police) and The Secret Garden. There were many others but the passage of time makes their memory indistinct now.
Eventually I took the dive and signed up to CompuServe (this involved phoning a nearby big city with full phone costs and a monthly subscription fee). That was a crazy time. There was so much good stuff on the CompuServe groups and Netscape Navigator software came as part of the package giving access to the World Wide Web. To be honest I spent more time in the CompuServe groups than in the WWW for the first few months when I first began using the service.
Eventually it was only a matter of time before I had my own website. Even today I take a juvenile pride in having that first paid for website kicked off the Internet before the end of the 90s. I was told some of the content of the site was illegal in my country and needed to be removed. I didnโt back down. I believe the real reason they binned me is because I had an original contract with no data volume restrictions. Then when I hit the big time with videos on my site they made me pay the ultimate price. They also lied that I would not get my money back if I refused to back down.
Books I purchased from Amazon after having already owned a short lived but very successful Website.