I got my 1st computer with Internet access in 2001. 11 years.
Same with my group, though I don’t think there are 40 of us still coalesced. The time we used to spend discussing breastfeeding has given way to drivers’ licenses and college financial aid.
86/87 when I left the airforce and was trying to decide what to do with my life. Holy crap polls like this make me feel older than my kids do.
i got my first computer (a whopping 4 megs, fellow dopers!!!) i think in 1993. for years, i didn’t do any internet beyond aol’s old safety net.
today i belong to just four boards, including the dope. my membership in each is less than ten years.
Mid 1980s. I remember asking one BBS operator to keep my account active while I went to university.
Entergy had a BBS locally in the late 80’s that I visited. There were lots of BBS back then. Byte mag had BIX. Some BBS required long distance calls and I couldn’t visit very often. Compuserve was very expensive. I quickly dropped my subscription there.
Then Usenet groups in the 90’s. Spam got too horrible there and people shifted to Yahoo groups in the late 90’s.
I can’t recall anytime since 85 that I wasn’t talking somewhere.
Prodigy back in 1991-92.
:hangs head in shame:
Posted on BBS in 1984 or 85. Was pretty boring though; mostly just traded games, I don’t remember much in the way of conversation.
After that, even though I’ve always had a computer, I didn’t really post on message boards until I got caught up in the Laci Peterson murder case. There wasn’t anyone in RL that really got into it, so I searched out a board and the rest is history!
Prodigy in roughly 1990. BBSes and Internet a few years later.
I definitely remember using CompuServe, or Compu$erve was what we called it when the bill arrived, in 1986. At about the same time, or maybe a bit earlier, there was also BRS After Dark and GEnie.
At least I’m pretty sure that I never used Quantum Link - the forerunner to AOL, or Plodigy, err, Prodigy. Back then, online access was such a novelty, that a modem was often included when you bought the software for the service. BUY it? Well, how else would you get it? You certainly couldn’t download it.
Usenet 1991 at college. I connected to BBS’s once or twice (literally) in the late 80s but never posted anything.
Local Los Angeles BBSes in 1987 and continuously since.
Also the same time I was introduced to pirate boards. Ahem.
Been here a long fricking time.
Why ask?
Oh now I read the title. 1994.
When was Qlink a thing?
I’ve had computers since '86 or so, but didn’t get an online connection until, um, 1994, I think? I think the former. My first ISP was “IDT” and I was on some mailing lists, including one for the doomed TV show American Gothic. Then I got AOL in 1995(shut up), which introduced me to message boards and an easy way to get involved with newsgroups as well. Laugh at AOL all you want, but they had some cool boards, including their Trek section, in which Ron D. Moore participated relatively regularly. I’m happy to say I was able to have a conversation with Moore about Deep Space Nine while the show was running.
So I put between 16 - 17 years.
I think I started in the mid 80s. Local BBS’s. Many still at 300 baud.
At one point, I was using a VT102 terminal that my Dad brought home from work.
-D/a
Why did the poll close after 100 answers?
The first BBS I can remember visiting (who’s name I can still remember) was the Mines of Moria, back in 1983. Anyone else remember it (and who ran it)?
Ah, the days of 300 baud cradle modems and 5 ¼" floppies…
It wasn’t the vote count that did it. It was a totally arbitrary time limit. It’s gone now but it did read: