this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
109 points (85.2% liked)

Ask Lemmy

27081 readers
1658 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

did you download the old doom shareware wads

Ummm... no. I loaded it through a floppy found in the mail through a system called shareware. (Where people would leave floppy disks in people's mailboxes, and we didn't know what viruses were so we just plugged them into our computers).

Did you actually exist in the 90s? That was floppy era of shareware, you'd spread games like Doom by mail and/or by copying the floppy and giving it to a friend. That's why it was called SHAREware, you shared it with friends. In some cases, computer stores would combine a bunch of shareware games into CD-ROMs (650MBs!!! So much space!!) and you'd get a lot of shareware all at once.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Oh my goodness, it's almost like what I said had nothing to do woth floppy disks or even discrediting their use.

According to the US census, 18 percent of housholds had internet use at home. Yahoo was around in 1995, usenet usage started dropping, and school systems started getting schoolwide internet access.

Your memory is vapid and you are clearly misremembering large swaths of important facts.

Edit: spelling.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Us Census figure was 1997. https://www.census.gov/data/tables/1997/demo/computer-internet/p20-522.html

Looks like 22% had internet at home, but over 54% had a computer.

How do you think the majority of computer users played Castle of the Winds, Jazz Jackrabbit, Doom, or other shareware games? Hint: it wasn't the internet because most computer users didn't have internet.

1993, the previous census figures are even worse as that's before AOL


Btw, downloads weren't a thing even for those who had internet. Back then, you paid per ~~minute~~ hour of internet usage.

My family connected to the internet to download (POP3) out email and then disconnected. Because my Mom would then want to use the phone to call her friends. Unless you had two phone lines like a rich person, extended multi-hour download sessions at 33kbps (or slower) was just not a thing.

That's 14MB per hour, if you don't remember how slow 90s internet was.

The college students with T1 connections were the source of shareware / disks by the later 90s (like 97, 98 etc. Etc). But home users weren't doing online downloads yet, too expensive and too slow.

So quit your bullshitting.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

We were poor as sin, still downloaded that diablo patch bro.

Happened to live In an apartment above a friend's business, during nighttime when the store was closed we had access to a second phone line.

If I recall correctly, the patch was 8 mb. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on the size.

Sorry but, there simply isn't any bullshit to be given pal. I was a child, so no idea how much it cost my dad. Maybe I'll ask him.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

https://money.cnn.com/1996/11/01/technology/aol/

In a letter sent to the service's members Oct. 28, AOL Chairman Steve Case touted a new pricing plan that offers unlimited access to the service's proprietary content as well as to the Internet for $19.95 a month.

[Snip]

Until the new unlimited plan was unveiled, all users paid $9.95 a month for 5 hours of usage and $2.95 for each additional hour.

This is what I remembered. My dad always told me to watch the Internet usage, because it cost money for each hour. These were 5-hours / month plans back then. That being said, 1996 is a year before Diablo, meaning the "unlimited" plans came in soon afterwards. But "unlimited" didn't really work out in our favor because my mom and grandma who lived with us always wanted to use the phone.

And we were the only kids of the neighborhood who had internet. People came over to our house to surf the net.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I was around in the 90’s. I downloaded the Doom shareware (and many others) from either the internet or local BBS’s in like, 1994.