I just worked out I have been connected to the net with various providers and packages now since July 1994, so thats 11 years!!! I started back in the early pre-Freeserve, no such thing as unlimited access dark days when there were only two ISP's in the UK to choose from that I recall, being both heavily Americanised AOL (when it was called America Online and not abbreviated) and COMPUSERVE. A handful of independant UK based ones started to spring up a few months later like U-Net which I switched to in 95, but it was not much of a choice like today.

I signed up with Compuserve as it was marginally cheaper Monthly fee that AOL, and enjoyed for that monthly fee of £30 or something simarlarly expensive, ZERO ACCESS....yes I had to pay 5 pence per minute to Compuserve when I dialled in PLUS the cost of the call to BT.......at certain times of the day it cost me 12 pence a minute, so in those days I just had time to check my email before going bankrupt!! The bigest file I downloaded then would be about 3Kb......

Those were the days, clunky, lumpy mainly AMerican web sites, TCP Stack dial up software on Windows 3.1, Netscape version 1 (urghh) and slow slow access at extortionate rates per minute.....

Anyone beat a net connection before July 94 here?
Dont think freeserve and the cheap Unlimited access came along before 1998......

Mid-1996 ish, when you had to pay AOL per minute, phone charges per minute, and a monthly subscription to AOL! All for a 56k connection. Freeserve definitely gave the first major step towards opening the net up to the masses since they didn't charge, you just had to pay the phone charges. I think you're right in that it was around 98-99 when they came along.

Freeserve really led the way.......there were a few others doing unlimited access or free calls at weekends back in 98, cant remember their names now......tried a few of them but always engaged of course. I can vividly remember getting my first phone bill that was not in triple figures just after Freeserve unlimited started.....phew....

For what it's worth I used a Packet switch dial up belonging to a university sometime in the mid 1980s for a while, when the Internet wasn't very big at all. Everything was terminal emulator driven. Hair shirt stuff!

I started using USENET via my Well account in the late 1980s / early 1990s, then eventually went via CIX to Demon in the early 1990s, when it was all DOS driven. I remember spending hours getting a DOS TCP/IP stack running, then having to do it all aover again when I got Windows. :( I used Compuserve for a while but that was very much an 'enclosed garden' and soon went over to CIX / Demon. That must have been sometime in '94....

Trumpet Winsock was the first Windows Stack I used, and the DOS stack I used was the KA9Q stack with...um...DOS implementations of rn and Pine for news and mail. When I had WIndows running a TCP/IP stack it was Pegasus for mail and I think I had Mosaic as a browser. I did tinker with the Lynx text browser, as well, under DOS.

I think I did my first web site for someone in '95, and remember being told that it would never catch on.

:)

Joe

trumpet winsock, THAT WAS IT.....what fun that was. I wonder how net kids would cope today if they were faced with Windows 3.1, Trumpet Winsock dialler, Netscape version 1 and no MSN!!!!
Hilarious.......make a great virtual reality TV show.....someone should open an internet cafe with such software and machines just as a joke.....

'93. I had an ancient amstrad 1512 hooked up to a modem I bought from an electronic surplus shop. Signed up with CompuServe (£6 per month) who were just working on 'web launcher' software.
It didn't work. I ended up spending my time looking at a BBS called 'Last of the summer wine' in Huddersfield. No one ever posted on it for days at a time.
Cancelled sub to CompuServe:D
How things have changed.......

I think I started in 95 maybe 94, I was with demon and the local POP (is that what they were called?) only had 4 modems so you could never get on. Lived in Hull where all local calls are 5.5p so atleast didn't cost much!

i only got my first pc in 1999 so just after that i was online...i was a late starter :P .......making up for it now though :)

i know somebody online who used to dial up on his 48k spectrum mind..........in the mid 80's i think

Prestel and Micronet 800 back in the mid 80's.

£200 for a 1200/75 baud modem on a Sinclair Spectrum, £99 connection fee to Prestel and then 5p per minute telephone connection!

I had my first computer when i was about 12/13, had windows 3.1 back in 1993/4, was donated to me by my uncle who worked in telecomms, then he got me a modem and hooked me up to the net in about 95, i cant remember the ISP, but the modem was a 28k thing.

Joel

I started in 1995, but dabbled on a mate's in '94. I signed up with Virgin and paid by the minute. Then moved onto Freeserve with the monthly charge and unlimited access some time later.

I used to go into chat rooms and found that I was one of the few women on the net back then!