Even getting the parts for a computer to work right was an ordeal. You could spend months researching parts and power supplies and cases then it only beeps or whirs when you try to boot.

Not to mention installing Windows required boot floppies before you could put in the install CD. Remember Win95/Win98 bootdisks we kept in our backpacks for emergencies?

Remember borrowing time on the mainframe or programming on a punch card (granted, I was in Junior high when I did that)?

My college had gopher early on. You could poke a South African college's Goper service a few times to tie it up and it'd drop you to a telnet prompt. where I had an early email address from University of Boulder who were just handing them out to whoever wanted one.

One day, there was a pile of people standing arounda computer in the library. Some admin installed mosaic on one of the library computers and we all sat around watching some people hit super early pages, mostly internet project pages. It was a few years before stuff really started getting interesting.

You aren't kidding. My city was really slow on the Internet so i was using aol. Asking for certs and using CC generators. It was good times actually.

Then I tried IRC and kept getting kicked from every channel and someone finally gave a reason before before kicking me. When i messaged them explaining how i have no other way to access the internet they were actually really cool and invited me back to the channel. I didn't go back as I knew i carried an unacceptable tag.

A year or 2 later we finally got a provider and oh wow now i remember trumpet windsock and the chaos of trying to find anything.

I still remember seeing a Toyota commercial with a web address and being like wow this internet thing is really taking off!

Now we've come full circle and i have to argue with my parents about the "truth" on Facebook. It's got its perks but terminals and desqview times make me miss the simplicity.. or complication. Depends how you look at it .

Pull up a chair son, I'll tell you a tale of Trumpet Winsock.

That was before my time, but my early schooling still had some marks from that era. Instead of giving links, we were taught to type out the entire URL. HTTPS and all. I didn't understand why at the time, but it makes perfect sense. You really didn't want to have a single wrong letter sometimes. Legally.

I can still vividly remember the sounds of the modem connecting