Young whippersnappers, no respect for the pioneers of the internet. Why, back in my day it took an hour to download one nudie picture, and then Jpegs came in and it only took forty minutes, but they were a proprietary format and we had to find a tranlator to view them.
And they don’t know we had to load a computer from a tape- not a disc drive. I might go and saturate my pillow.
45, and I seem to still be alive. I also remember to wear my underwear in the inside, most of the time. Easy with the old, there, sonny jim.
Come over and play on my lawn! I have a trampoline. 
For the OP- by my count we have 4 members who are mid 80’s I guess they would remember the attack on pearl harbour, if not the last Ice Age.
Back in 1994 I had AOL for DOS, Compuserve for DOS, and Prodigy was the only one with a web-looking interface (and it was slow as heck for that reason). 2400 baud rate.
I also was on some BBSs (all DOS) but they were usually just some guy with a computer who was sitting there waiting for someone to login so he could chat.
Yikes, by 1994 I had a broadband connection. (ETA: I hope that doesn’t come across as snarky!)
A few years before that I managed a Software, Etc. and sold Prodigy and Compuserve starter kits. Prodigy had a promotion for obtaining sign-ups–it’s how I got my first VCR (just a couple years out of the parent’s house) and a set of luggage that I still have today.
Ah, to go back to the C=64 days when logging onto a BBS was a technological marvel!
Or even the VIC-20!
Aiiiieeeee I’m devolving back to my TRS-80! But it has 16K! Extended Basic!
Bodacious machine! By the time that was out we were already Commodore snobs. We had a “users group” at work with all sorts of “personal computers” being represented. Did you or anybody you know have one of those Timex Sinclair powerhouses? What was the most exotic and one-of-a-kind toys that you knew of?
What year did you finally get an IBM, or IBM-knockoff?
There was also alt.fan.cecil-adams on Usenet at least as far back as 1994. I recall Flodnak posting there in about that timeframe.
We need another '99ers check in thread.
I still have my first computer, a Compaq Portable.
Its got a 9" ‘green screen’ and 128k of memory. And it still works! :eek:
I don’t use it anymore, but I did ‘fire it up’ a while back, just for grins. 
When I first started out on AOL (early 90’s), IIRC it cost $24.95/month! 
Check out Post #39 and the link there. ntucker downloaded a file with all the users’ data available in their profiles. As of mid-November. Unless there’s need for actual sign-in, the data is on that file.
I miss playing FoodFight on a bbs…
I was unable to download the complete file that ntucker collected, so I asked him to strip off all the people who had never posted. From that file I sorted to find that there are 374 people who joined sometime in 1999 and who have posted at least once in 2011.
And before they went to a flat fee, I ran up a bill one month in the middle-90’s of almost $100. At 2400 baud, no less, so there wasn’t a lot of graphic material.
Except for your language when you saw the bill, right? 
You’re G!*&d%#m right! What’s this ferslinger Internet good for, anyway?
I usually think of “99’ers” as claimed by you folks from March, and I have an etiquette question:
As someone who joined in September, am I entitled to call myself a 99’er?