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Rolling Out the Internet in the 90s [Best Of] (media.piefed.social)
submitted 6 days ago by Sergio@piefed.social to c/bestoflemmy@lemmy.world
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@elrainia@lemmy.world describes working on internet infrastructure back in the 1990s. This was on one of those "drive by" AskLemmys where a new user posts a juicy question, then after a couple hours they delete the topic and their account. However, those posts and comments are still visible in Piefed, ex: https://piefed.social/post/1733969#comment_9969293

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[-] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 19 points 6 days ago

...a new user posts a juicy question, then after a couple hours they delete the topic and their account.

Well shit, that ain't good. Yay PieFed, via the recent update.

Interesting that the date chosen is 1990, as the early WWW was just getting going at that point, and a big leap forward. Ideally, it was common for WWW "pages" to include custom layouts / formats that was much harder to achieve using the Internet, which began in the 60's.

Me, I was still using BBS's at the time, barely had any contact with the traditional internet, and didn't hit the WW until the mid-to-late 90's, so totally missed out on those early days. Seriously, I wonder what they were like..?

Like Ed Grimley, I must say though-- using a 300baud modem in 1990 was pretty 'stone knives and bearskins' stuff!

[-] zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Yeah, no one sane was still using a 300 baud modem in 1990. 1200 and 2400 baud would have been the bog standard.

[-] Elrainia@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

The 300 baud was 1983-84. We must have been near the era of 14400 by 1990, but yeah, definitely 2400.

[-] zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago

You're more or less right, 9600bps modems did exist in the late 80s, but no mere mortal owned them 14.4k came not long after and became really common. I actually saved up and got one of the first 19.2k modems on the market when I was a teen in 93 or so, but almost nothing was compatible with it so it was usually just 14.4k or 9600 if you tried to connect to anything.

Technically, its gets weird because in the late 80s baud and bits per second kind of diverged because of the way the protocols were able to encode data better. I don't think anything actually went higher than 2400 baud though we kept using baud and bps interchangeably.

[-] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

In '87-88 I distinctly remember a Mac BBS in the Philly area called "19 East," so named because it was run from a 19K bps modem. (EDIT yeah, actually it was probably 9600) I recall that modem being expensive for the time, but not absurdly so. But still, not something we college kids would typically own.

A 2400baud modem in the late 80's was perfectly fine for normal BBS access / use, and would only bog down a bit for downloading warez, which of course was a super-common activity those days.

@elrainia@lemmy.world

[-] zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago

I didn't see any 19.2k modems until 92-93 and I was obsessed with finding one, so that's either very impressive or another case of one of us remembering poorly as alluded to in the post. :)

[-] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 2 points 5 days ago

Yeah, checking just now, 19k seems highly unlikely for that date. I think it was probably 9600 bps, instead. Memory sure does get garbled, easily...

[-] dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net 11 points 6 days ago

Great story but the first “MMO” was MUD, or Multi User Dungeon, created in 1978. Shades was inspired by MUD.

[-] zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 6 days ago

Just to extend your comment a little, I don't think most people that know what MUDs were are aware there was a singular game that they were named after. The game MUD spawned a genre, called "MUDs" obviously, just like Rogue did, which lead to "roguelikes".

[-] Sergio@piefed.social 4 points 6 days ago

SCENE: early 90s. I'm at a computer, desperately grinding on an LPMud. I have a packed suitcase at my feet because I have to catch a flight but I'm SO CLOSE to maxing out my main character and reaching the top "wizard" level. Grind, grind, grind, grind, finally I reach it! With fifteen minutes to go til the very last minute I can make the plane! I spend like 10 minutes walking around the MUD being the top level and chatting with people, then finally I run off and just barely catch the flight. I relax for a couple weeks. No computer access because it's the early 90s. I finally get back home and sign on to the MUD but... it's gone! WTF?! I ask around and it turns out the MUD got shut down bc the admin was running it off his work computer and his work finally caught on to all this weird network traffic! FML now I gotta do all that grinding again!

Actually the admin was cool, they were setting up a new MUD and said they'd start me out at wizard level, but I was like nah I already spent too much time on this, lel. And I never played MUDs again.

@JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social @Elrainia@lemmy.world @dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net

[-] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 3 points 5 days ago

Fun story and commentary on gaming addiction!

I don't recall playing MUD's in particular, but in the early aughts (the 2000's), I got seriously addicted to "Armagetron" (3D version of the grid-cycle game from the original TRON movie), and then "Gunbound," which was like a super-deluxe version of the old "Scorched Earth" artillery game. I'm kind of a late-bloomer in life, and those were sort of like a beer-filled, addictive multiplayer game that I otherwise would have been playing in college, more or less. So, good to get those out of my system, I guess.

[-] Sergio@piefed.social 3 points 5 days ago

uh... I dunno about "addiction"... but I used to play Civilization pretty much nonstop...

[-] zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I love this story. Here is one of mine.

SCENE: The year is 1993, the hottest BBS door game is Usurper and the players on the local BBS are very, very competitive. How can I possibly do better? Well, the answer is obvious, I need to setup my own BBS with Usurper and figure out the exact perfect methodology within the game to become the stronger. So I do so, and I then write some text macros to handle some of the more tedious tasks I would do every single day when the turns reset. Eventually my character far outpaces everyone on the server with a wider gap every day and our group dominates the server. My team mates don't like that I am so much stronger and decide to boot me from the team, but fail to kill me. I then make a team of one and wipe them and every one else out every day for two weeks until they decide to reset the game. I have become the usurper.

[-] Sergio@piefed.social 2 points 5 days ago

woah that's pretty awesome, it's that old-school hacker spirit. I never heard of "door games" before, TIL about Usurper too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door_(bulletin_board_system)

https://www.gamebanshee.com/bbs/guides/usurper.php

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRMibRr6ZUM

I had an account on Cleveland Freenet back in the day but I never really used it for much.

[-] mwproductions@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

I still remember the telnet address to the MUD I played in the late '90s. That will be burned in my brain forever.

[-] EtnaAtsume@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

I'm still playing them today. Rather an overlooked chapter in web history...

[-] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 1 points 6 days ago

Eh, from what I'm reading, MUD1 could support only a few dozen simultaneous players at once.

My understanding of the definition of MMO's is that they commonly support somewhere between 2,000 and 20,000 simultaneous users, hence the word "massive" in the acronym. So, you know... it doesn't really seem like MUD1 fits that definition.

[-] dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net 1 points 6 days ago

Shade couldn’t support anywhere near that many, but the poster refers to it as “(first mmo?)” which is why I commented.

[-] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 1 points 6 days ago

So if I understand correctly, Shades was inspired by MUD1, but not actually an MMO by definition, i.e. "Massively Multiplayer Online."

[-] Elrainia@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

It was definitely not a MMO! It was a bit of a joke comment (British humour - sorry). I’d be amazed if it had anything more than 100 consecutive players (that’s a complete guess).

I had no idea of it’s MUD heritage then and it’s only today that the comments above have really made me join those dots up.

[-] dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net 2 points 6 days ago

Yep. I’m pretty sure the networking and computing tech required for a true MMO didn’t exist until ~1995, and pretty much as soon as it did we got Ultima Online and then EQ.

[-] crazycraw@crazypeople.online 9 points 6 days ago

cool post. I thought classy to say thanks for reading at the end.

i kinda miss that too.

i remember a bit more... Tomfoolery.. in the early 90s though ...more than the Morris worm...

and don't get me started on phreaking.

[-] otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 6 days ago

Heh. One of my college roommates used to be able to rattle off the number from listening to our modem dialing. 😱 Sure, a great party trick and genuinely impressive, and it often led to him showing off his crazy-fast custom rig sealed in a tote of veg oil... but it was the room it was in that was the mood-killer. 😅🤌🏼

[-] zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Heh, there was definitely a lot more tomfoolery going on, but this person doesn't seem the type to engage in such. It was honestly amazing and I miss it.

[-] AntEater@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 6 days ago

I was playing with several local BBSs back in the early 90s (Fidonet!!) but got on the internet around '93. It was a much more fun place to be. Definitely not corporate. For me, I'd say the inflection point was when AOL let its users loose with web access. The never ending fall. There was a natural selection typ filter in getting on-line before then - you have to have technical know-how or be in a university where access was provided. Usenet and IRC were awesome. I seriously miss the feel of it.

[-] Sergio@piefed.social 2 points 6 days ago

There was a natural selection typ filter in getting on-line

Kinda like the Fediverse, huh?

[-] Bubbaonthebeach@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 days ago

That brought back great memories. Thank you.

[-] dumples@piefed.social 4 points 6 days ago

I don't have any specific memories of the early internet but I do remember DOS on the family computer. Having to remember the paths to run the shareware programs we wanted to run on a floppy

[-] Treczoks@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

Been there, been part of it, too. Oh those times, before the invention of email SPAM. Later, the days of an open web without ads.

[-] Sergio@piefed.social 6 points 6 days ago

Yeah. Isn't it funny how we thought the Internet would magically make the world a better place? Maybe it was just me.

this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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