I typed in the URL on a whim and somehow the site is still up on some obscure server. It had a starfield background and a MIDI file of Chariots of Fire that actually played. Has anyone else found old pages still floating around from back then?
I used to argue with my buddy Dave that Napster was killing the music industry, but after finding 40 obscure bands in one weekend back in 99 that I never would have heard on the radio, I started to wonder if the RIAA lawsuit was actually fighting against something good - what side were you on back then?
I found that asking a direct question in #php on EFnet got me a working script in under 10 minutes, but the trade-off was wading through endless ASCII art and trolls, whereas forums like WebmasterWorld gave slower but more reliable answers with no flame wars - which approach actually taught you more back then?
Back in '97, a classmate told me my site loaded slow because I used like 50 dancing baby GIFs instead of a single Quicktime clip. I argued GIFs were more reliable since nobody had fast internet anyway, but now I wonder if they were right. Did anyone else get flak for sticking with 8-bit animation over real video back then, and did you ever switch it up?
I actually MISSED the sound of a 56k modem connecting in 1998. My whole family would groan when I logged on to check my Angelfire email, but that chirping noise meant I was about to explore something new. I learned that slow internet forced me to appreciate every single webpage I visited instead of just scrolling past stuff. Anyone else actually enjoy the wait back then?
Back in '97 I downloaded a MIDI file that claimed to be a remix of the Zelda theme, but it was actually a virus that made Netscape freeze for 45 minutes straight. Every time I tried to close it, the modem dial tone just kept screeching at me. Has anyone else lost a whole afternoon to a single bad download?
Found one of those old AOL installation CDs in my dad's garage yesterday. Still in the shrink wrap. Must be from 1996 or so. Crazy to think I spent hours on dial-up with that disc back in the day. I still remember the screeching modem sound. Anyone else still hold onto their old ISP discs for nostalgia?
I was at the library last week and heard this teenager say the Netscape logo looked like some outdated relic. It hit me that my first browser was literally the gateway to a whole new world for me. Does anyone else still get a little nostalgic over that old compass icon?
I spent all night in 1997 grabbing 4 songs off Napster at 3 kb/s, then my dad picked up the phone and killed the connection. Comparing that to streaming a whole album in seconds today isn't even a contest. Who else had to schedule downloads around when nobody needed the landline?
He said to wait exactly 8 seconds before hitting send after connecting, and I blew off his advice until I got booted 6 times in a row trying to send a term paper, has anyone else heard this trick or was he just messing with me?
Back in 97 I spent like 6 months just clicking AOL keyword buttons to get to sites. Then my buddy in Philly showed me how to type the actual web address into the browser bar. Total game changer. I could go straight to a site without scrolling through some random AOL menu that had 50 categories. No more waiting for the keyword to load either. Has anyone else remember how much faster it felt once you stopped using keywords?
Last week I was cleaning out my parents' basement and found the old desk we used for the family computer back in 1995. Remember how we had to have a whole separate phone line installed so nobody would pick up the phone and kick us off Prodigy? My dad spent like $40 a month for that extra line. And the room was always freezing because the computer generated so much heat. My mom put a little fan on the desk pointed at the monitor. Anyone else have a setup like that or were we just extra?
Last week I was cleaning out an old hard drive and found a backup of my 1997 Geocities site. I cringed at first with all the tiled backgrounds and blinking gifs. But then I looked closer at the code, at the guestbook and the hand drawn pixel art I made in MS Paint. It hit me that this was the purest form of self expression online before everything became templates and ads. Has anyone else gone back and looked at their old personal sites?
Went with the 56k because the store guy said it was worth the extra $50, but my phone lines only supported 33.6 so I spent the whole summer waiting on a single JPEG of a skateboard deck to load halfway.
I found my old Geocities site about cats wearing hats buried on the Wayback Machine last night. It's still got that terrible blinking gif of a dancing banana I spent 3 hours learning to code. Does anyone else still check their old pages or am I just nostalgic...
I rebuilt my old band's website from 1998 last week (it crashed on my modern browser, of course). Half of me thinks those rainbow text and starry background pages had way more personality than today's clean templates. But the other half remembers waiting 5 minutes for a single GIF to load on dial-up in my bedroom in Tucson. Which side are you on? Do you think the janky early aesthetic was actually better, or are we just romanticizing the pain?
Thought I was getting all these cool graphics and JavaScript effects but it was just a bunch of broken links and ugly clip art that looked like it was drawn in MS Paint. Anyone else blow their allowance on those sketchy template sites?
Last month I tried to rebuild a personal page using stuff I remembered from the mid 90s. Forgot that blink tags and marquees don't work in modern browsers at all. Had to scrap three hours of work after testing it in Chrome. Anybody else have old coding habits come back to bite them?
I keep seeing posts about how "cozy" and "simple" the old 56k modem sounds were, but yall are forgetting the reality. I lived in a house with three siblings and ONE phone line in 1997. Every time I wanted to check my NeoPets or download a 5MB wallpaper of a Windows logo, someone would pick up the phone and BAM - disconnected. Plus the screeching was LOUD and woke up my parents at 2am when I tried sneaking online. Who else remembers the actual struggle of waiting 45 minutes for one JPEG to load? Let's be real about this.
That disc claimed to have 10,000 hand-picked websites archived, but half the links were dead and the other half were just ads for AOL. Anyone else get burned by those scam compilation discs?
I was digging through a shoebox of old AOL floppy disks and found a bill from 1997 that showed $12.99 for 15 hours of usage, but there was a $4 surcharge for "failed connection attempts." I did the math and that means I paid for over 5 hours of just busy signals that month because everyone in my town was trying to get online after 6 PM. Did anyone else's ISP sneak in fees for crap they couldn't control like that?
Bought a whole box of Encarta 95 discs at a garage sale thinking they'd be cool for nostalgia. Every single disc had scratches so bad they wouldn't load past the intro screen. Anyone else get burned on old software that turned out to be junk?
He told me the phone line could only handle 30 minutes of connection before it fried the card, so I set a kitchen timer every time I went on Prodigy. Six months later the modem was fine, but that timer is STILL stuck in my head anytime I hear a dial tone.