Your first memory of the Internet?

Kicking it old school!

 

The spring of 1994, when I was in 8th grade, I got on Prodigy for the first time.

I specifically remember going onto baseball message boards in the summer of 1994 and griping about the upcoming MLB strike.

My parents were completely stupid about computers and they never, ever, ever, ever turned ours on. That baby was all mine, and I had free reign on the Internet from the age of 12 on.

 

Pre-Internet: CompuServe, Bix, PeopleLink, The Source, MCIMail, GEnie and probably others in early- to mid 80s ... on everything from a Vic-20 to a TRS-80 Model 4P running CP/M. Oh, and for a brief while on a Brother thermal typewriter at about 150 baud. The Internet itself ... probably via CompuServe in the late 80s, back when TCP/IP stacks were new and poorly done.

 

My first memory is of Tony Larussa doing an ad for Prodigy.


((((Prodigy Communications Corporation (Prodigy Services Corp., Prodigy Services Co., Trintex) was an online service that offered its subscribers access to a broad range of networked services, including news, weather, shopping, bulletin boards, games, polls, expert columns, banking, stocks, travel, and a variety of other features.

Initially subscribers using personal computers accessed the Prodigy service by means of POTS or X.25 dialup. For its initial roll-out, Prodigy supported 1200 bps modems. In an effort to provide faster service and to stabilize the diverse modem market, Prodigy offered low-cost 2400 bps internal modems to subscribers at a discount. Soon, Prodigy offered 56K modems instead.

The company claimed it was the first consumer online service, citing its graphical user interface and basic architecture as differentiation from CompuServe, which started in 1979 and used a command line interface.

By 1990 it was the second-largest online service provider, with 465,000 subscribers trailing only CompuServe's 600,000.[1] At first its headquarters were in White Plains, New York, while the headquarters at a later point moved to Austin, Texas.))))

 

Didn't Prodigy have to shut down because it wasn't Y2K-compliant?