It all started yesterday when my dear old Dell laptop started making that dreaded clicking sound. Judging by the whirr, it had to be the CD drive (actually a CD-RW DVD-ROM combo).
Not sure if it’s really broken, but it got me pondering how old the laptop was.
As mentioned earlier, I use an indexing program to index my old emails. So it was easy to search and locate the “new laptop” emails exchanged with Dell. Turns out the laptop is 4.5 years old.
Further thinking: when did I get my first PC? What about the first time I went ‘online’ (pre-Internet access)? What about my first Internet access itself? I did a quick bit of searching on Google Groups and found this:
“My first ever use of the Internet Listserv” archived in bit.listserv.cinema-l dated May 13 1994
“My first ever post” to rec.arts.movies was on Jun 5 1994
“Trumpet 24 and WS_ftp freezing” alt.winsock Oct 27 1994
I had the email address dsidwell@werple.apana.org.au back them.
The above is very interesting. It shows me:
- I was using Windows 3.1 or 3.11 and the famous Trumpet Winsock (which, I think, added TCP/IP support to Windows. Or at least dial up support so we could use our modems)
- I dabbled with List Servers. Before Forums these were email-based discussions. You sent email to a given ‘listserv’ address and everyone on that list got the email…and could reply to everyone on the list etc. I shouldn’t talk about them in the past; they are still alive 14 years on. Obviously the one I used above was to do with movies/cinema.
- I was using APANA. From memory they were a not-for-profit group who somehow had access to this Internet thing.
Up until then I’d been using my dial up modem to access Bulletin Boards (BBs). From memory it was a program called QMODEM, which gave you a text-only ‘terminal’ into the BBs. The BBs themselves were other users PCs giving access to parts of their hard drives. You could search for files and download them, using programs (protocols?) like zmodem.
All these dates make sense now. I recall not being on the BBs that long before The Internet became available. The biggest thing I remember downloading was the (legal!) shareware version of a new game called Doom. It was released late 1993. From memory it was 3 diskettes worth, 4 to 5MB, I’m guessing. Nothing today. But when you are on a slow dial up link and there’s no error recovery (it has to start again if one little thing goes wrong), it took hours and was a tense time. So much so I now remember deciding to not watch the amount downloaded value crawling upwards and left my tiny flat in Windsor to go shopping…
I came back home to discover the whole lot had downloaded perfectly.