What Was the Very First Internet Webpage That You Visited?

[sleepy]

For me it was the mid 90's, around '96, and I was looking for news about the (then) next Castlevania video game release, so I went to the main Los Angeles Central library downtown and used their (then) new public Internet computer station to go to the Konami website in Kobe, Japan. Konami is the publisher of the game series. This was amazing to me, and at a time when a phone call to Japan would have cost $10 a minute.

They had maybe 20 computers set up in several rows of bench tables and bar stool seats with, I think, table dividers on both sides of each seat, and All were Busy, including the one I was using.
We were allowed 30 minutes of use at a time, and then got back in line for the next shot at one.

That library was also one of the first locations to utilize touch screen CRT monitors, late 90's, but those screens served to provide site maps for the physical library itself. The library itself occupies at least half of a city block or more. Very large with several annexes.

 

[faralos]

well I started on computers before the actual internet started
so we used what were called bbs (bulletin board systems)
which were usually someone with a phone hookup for their computer
and my first online hookup was for the old now defunct JACG
(Jersey Atari Computer Group)
as for the internet it was actually to look for docs to fix the damn computer
I had gotten that I could NOT get online at all with at that time!

 

[Shockman]

I don't recall. It may have been AOL. I was online before the internet on the bbs sites with a 300b modem.

 

[sleepy]

Funny that you mention the docs. Round about my second or third session on the internet, I had picked up a junked 386 and I went to Kinko's and bought time there to download docs and drivers to a whole mess of floppy discs, late '96.

But man, the availability of software and firmware on the manufacturer's official websites for PCs and peripheral cards in those days was much much greater than what the current companies offer for support these days.
These days you are lucky to find the install software on the .mfg website after only several years, but back then at Kinko's I ran into dozens of "Index of" pages from the .mfgs that were Loaded with every installer and driver that they offered.

Some pages had 50+ files with up to 10 pages of them. Great customer service.

That reminds me. Even though it was a junked Dell 386 in the Pentium II era and even though I was not the registered owner, I was still able to call Dell customer service on the Telephone and talk to the technical support guy for half an hour For Free on their old 800 number.

I got the junked PC to boot, but the MS DOS 5 system that was on it was corrupt and unusable, so I picked up a used copy of DOS 6 at a local repair shop for $50. It worked, but I then found out how limited the GUI and game options were on a 386 with a standard VGA monitor.

So then I began reading up in order to build my own AMD K6 system, and back then I was able to call AMD and talk to technical support again for half an hour For Free on their 800 number, and then they sent me a copy of their 500+ page AMD K6 Technical Data book and additional booklets detailing 3D Now and their associated chip architectures at no cost.

I defy you to find that level of service these days from any of them now.
I guess they lost their shirts over it.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

IIRC, one day around 1991 i took my turbo-boosted mac+ to a friend's house and he hooked it up to usenet and the early web. (proto-web?) he called up some site dedicated to star trek, i think.

but every early website i saw tended to be an automatic disaster because of how painfully slow the graphics loaded. not to mention, all i really cared about at the time were my C64 BBS sites. it wasn't until years later at my corporate gigs that the web started to shine.

 

[faralos]

you had graphics? all I got was text writing ever so slowly across my screen
using that (in)famous 300 baud modem then we finally 'upgraded' to a 900 baud one'
woohoo funny how that one simple thing kept me happy
remember the 'great' cassette tape drives? My Atari 400xl used one
and it sucked to say the least sometimes it would take a half hour of cassette play
to load up a game only to have it crash halfway through the tape load
Ah the good ol' days...?

 

[Itchigo]

Ummm well, I started with xp. In about late 2008. Fashionably late to the party as always. I don't know what I first clicked on, but I do know I went to IRP first, then here.

 

[sleepy]

IRP first? You must have searched for pinball.

 

[Itchigo]

I did. I started with Space Cadet pinball, then saw MS Pinball Arcade which only had like 5 tables, so I went looking for cd roms to buy. I found IRP and got VP to work. VPM took some time to get working as I was barely computer literate at the time- and I do mean barely. I literally had bought my first computer months ago prior to this. Then I found this place and started downloading tables which I never got working for quite some time. I started building tables without any coding knowledge, just a raw shell. (See Rube Goldberg, Originals). The rest, as they say, is history. I have 2 VP related sites, and am working on a third (RoguePinball.com) and have built 2 computers on my own from scratch, one of those being a laptop. Had I never fouind VP, I'm quite sure it would've ended right there.

 

[faralos]

I keep telling everyone I created a monster and lo and behold...
I give you Itchigo...see he started here with NO knowledge of anything vp related
two short years later now he is teaching ME about coding
since he has created his own table templates from scratch
something I have yet to try to learn!
and not even a royalty check...sigh...:D

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

I keep telling everyone I created a monster and lo and behold...
I give you Itchigo...see he started here with NO knowledge of anything vp related
two short years later now he is teaching ME about coding
since he has created his own table templates from scratch
something I have yet to try to learn!
and not even a royalty check...sigh...:D

i'm sure a lot of hard work, mental energy and dedication had a part to play in his progress. :)


anyway, yea... about your earlier comment... i might have been confusing first contact with the internet (1991) with first contact with the web (probably more like 1995). although before that happened i remember visiting some of the 'intermediate' sites, like compuserve and maybe altavista or some such. that was probably my first experience with graphics-oriented services through the painful medium of a 28K or 56K modem.