In reply to a post by caley:

Anyone remember trying load memory high so to keep enough conventional memory to run programmes etc ?

Yes. I started working life doing support for PCs and one of the highest skills was eeking out the last byte of memory. We had a network called Pathworks at the time (from Digital Equipment Corporation) and it had so many different executables to fire up the network that you had to shift them all around to get enough memory left to run some of the programs.

Was a labour of love for me - probably did it many hundreds of times to tweak each individual PC for maximum available memory. I miss those days - tech support these days generally just do a google and if that doesn't give them the answer they haven't got a clue.

Was using CompuServe and the likes occasionally at work around 20 years ago but didn't actually get myself on the Internet until the late 90's. And didn't fully start using it at home until ADSL became available on my exchange around 2001.

In reply to a post by Jax2:

I did not realize the internet was even available twenty years ago, my exchange only became enabled in 2005, think I started in 2006.

Your exchange may have had ADSL enabled in 2005 but it had Internet years before that. Anywhere that had a basic phone line was capable of Internet connection (or bulletin boards before that). It just all happened to be digital rather than analogue.

I did you mean you only got the heady heights of 3Kbps? As ADSL started out as fixed 500Kbps then dropping to 3Kbps would be a pretty enormous fall in speeds.

Best I ever achieved in conventional memory was using only 9k of the allotted 640k. I was on cloud nine when I did that. Meant I could run anything almost. My first computer was a state of art £1400 386 dx40 with a whole high end 4mgs of ram and would you believe a 170mg hard drive. Windows 3 was the system of the day but soon went onto 3.1 then 3.11 which started the networking off. DOS 6 was the order of the day newly updated from DOS 5. Things are too easy today, programmes that configure themselves and plug n play. The fun was getting things to work.

Would I believe a 170MB hard drive - no... My first PC was an Amstrad 1640, 640KB memory (no extended memory), no hard drive, 2 x5 1/4" floppy drives and an EGA monitor.

My second PC only had a 10MB hard drive and still didn't have extended memory - but it did have a 3 1/2" floppy drive - an amazing technical leap.

I've been online for around 15 years, my connection history:

NTL dial-up - did what it said.

TalkTalk (ADSL, not Max nor LLU) - awful, wouldn't connect during peak times. This was when they offered 'free' broadband with their international calling plan.

Freeserve dial-up - trusty, used it when TalkTalk refused to connect.

Pipex ADSL - rock sold ADSL Max connection, would still be with them but when Tiscali bought them they wanted to lower my usage limit and increase the price I was paying. They were hell to leave, kept charging me and sending debt collection letters but I made a formal complaint after months of threats and they stopped.

Plusnet - as with Pipex, rock solid ADSL Max but I left for Sky LLU to benefit from ADSL2+ speeds.

Sky - reliable, fast, relatively well-priced but left for TalkTalk as their TV service seemed cheaper, what a bad idea.

TalkTalk (LLU) - connection okay but support pants as expected, OCEs on the forums seem to have less power nowadays. Upgraded to fibre in March of this year and IPTV channels stopped working, it took a complaint to the CEO's office to get it sorted.

Got a few months left on my contract with TalkTalk, I already have Sky TV back and I'm going to go to BT Infinity as soon as I can.

I've just checked mine and my first payment to Compuserve of $12.42 (£8.52) was 21 years ago tomorrow! I started with a 2400bps modem.

ISP history is something like:

Compuserve
Freeserve
Onetel
Freenetname
Madasafish
Plusnet

Edited by kasg (Fri 29-Aug-14 11:21:33)

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

I thought Bill Gates invented the WWW in 1995?

I nearly choked on that - unbelievable! Bill Gates held out for as long as he could and was very late to join the bandwagon, 1995 was, indeed, the year that he cottoned on to what was happening when he realised that Netscape was a serious competitor and started trying to wipe them out (successfully, as it turned out).

I believe for ages he said the web would never catch on. Then the panic to develop Internet Explorer.

In reply to a post by kasg:

I nearly choked on that ............

Same as I do when people think that Apple invented the GUI and mouse!

These were the fun days.......Memories

Edited by deleted (Fri 29-Aug-14 13:04:19)