As I look back to internet in 1994

This morning as I set on this computer in my house I think back to 1994 when I first got my new/ used home and got on the internet. I found a world of Phone numbers in my hand that lead to the word know as the internet. 28.8 dial up witch we thought was okay then the 32 dial up witch was faster.. I remember a site like this http://yesterdaytractors.com with a dial phone number to dial the main frame to get it. Those where the days with a computer in dos. some times it was more trouble than what it was worth. I have watch the internet grow like I could never think of. Tractor clubs, tractor business, tractor salvage yards and in let is see videos. this computer some times is better than my T.V. Here is too Yesterday tractors keep up the good work. To every body like me who has been here for a long time I have to say thank you. I think every body has made this site grow and made it a great site to be on.

I was first exposed to computers at the JD dealerships. All DOS based. Then slowly switched over to windows based. First on the Internet in 1999 or 2000. Dialup connections and all. We got DSL in 2002-2003. While I was still working I did not surf the net much as I just did not have the time. Now I am an Internet junkie. LOL

I am holding out from a Smart Phone just because I do not want 24/7 Internet service. At least now when I walk outside I am out of the reach of my addiction. LOL

I was first involved with computers on the job in 1990 when I entered Ford warranty claims into Ford's database.

Every employment situation I've been in since has required me to use a computer on the job.

BTW, with the program for entering Ford warranty claims, if you didn't enter any data for 30 seconds, it would reject the whole thing and you'd have to start over. I used to go in after hours, lock the door, and take the phone off the hook, 'cause just when you were in the middle of it is when the phone would ring or someone would want to talk to you.

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Back in the day when I still worked, the company started inventorying using a barcode reader. Anyway we were to transfer these to a dumb terminal and using a dial up system where you would call the number and when you heard the tones(like fax) you would put the handset onto a modem of sorts with a rubber cradle and then get on the dumb terminal and send the info that you had typed in. You could keep the connection up but occasionally it was lost and you would lose some of the data. As I recall we would input a couple of pages and then hit save. The data was being sent to a mainframe computer in Chicago.

In 1967 I was attending U. Of Houston. Taking a class where we had to create a program on punch cards then take those to the computer lab and see if it would run. We sure have come a long way since then.

My first computer was a 386 with windows 3.1 and no modem. My neighbor brought it over as his company was moving up in the world with 486 computers and windows95 whoohoo. I added a modem and I was on the net. Not too long I found YT

Our first taste of the internet as kids was America Online... I was about 12 when that came out. I discovered Yesterday's Tractors at about roughly the same time (1998/99)... I have been coming ever since. I guess you could say that I spent my entire teenage and adult life growing up here on YT. Growing up in the suburbs with a love of tractors, as you can imagine I couldn't share my hobby with many friends. This site gave me a way to learn, talk with others, and just enjoy the hobby when I couldn't be around tractors. I have learned a LOT from everyone on this site. I try to return the favor when I can, and also use YouTube to chronicle my rust habit and share it with others.

There aren't enough thanks in the world I can give to everyone on this site, including the founders and current management team. This is quite literally my best, and most visited site. Well, between that and YouTube. I can't get enough of the online tractor show!

Thanks all for watching me grow up, for teaching me (not only about tractors), and for helping others. Now... Where can I get a bunch of volunteers to come help raise a pole barn when the time comes?! Ha ha! That is the current adventure - looking for our next house, getting married in May, and trying for our first tractor driver addition.
Kens YouTube Channel

Due to a deaf family member we?ve had email since the early 1980?s so it wasn?t quite the transition as some folks had. Before the www we used to use gopher I think it was called? Like a text / menu version of the www. Had pictures of you clicked the links. Could telnet into something called mosaic running on a server in the UK and see the beginnings of the www. Was pretty neat.

There was newsgroups you used to subscribe to to get to the type of community here.

My wife got her degree in Computer Technology in her early forties, she will be 69 tomorrow. She worked at the school and was teaching computer classes. I had decided at that time I was too old to learn about them. I'm 3 years younger than her. After a few years later my Dad got one and got on line. I then thought if he wasn't too old I sure wasn't either. I sat down once a week for an hour while my wife would teach me. One of the first things she found for me was this site here, I've been here ever since. I'm not too savvy with it, I still don't want to learn how to post a picture but I get around ok. I would be lost without it now. She also got me into a smart phone about 5 years ago and would be lost without that too. I did get a cell phone before most people around me had one that was 1989, all calls were a quarter a minute with it at that time.

what, early 80's, Vic 20 with 14.4 modem, cassette recorder to record your dos 3 commands and BBS's

Did the exact same thing in 1968 at Purdue.

In 1969 I enrolled in a computer programming course at a school in Akron, Ohio. Started out writing a program and transferring it to key punch cards then run them on a computer the size of a small garage......
I bought my first computer about 1987, an Apple II GS if I remember right. Both my kids learned to type on it playing a game called sticky bear thump.

About an hour ago the wife and I just got home from buying our first smart phones.....the fun is about to begin and I'm in no hurry to learn.

I bought my Mac 512 used back in 1990 I think. I know I did my '89 taxes on it. I got it to run Quicken and I believe MacInTax was the tax program. There was no internet available in this area yet. Very shortly I got a dialup shell account that was running Unix. All there was at that point was email and newsgroups. The only thing tractor related I could find was ATIS, Antique Tractor Information Service which was a internet mail list housed on the Forsyth county server in NC.
Chris and Kim were active posters on that list. Shortly those funny http: addresses started showing up. I think I used to access them with Lynx, a text based web browser on the unix server. Chris and Kim went on to start Yesterdays Tractors, I think Chris wrote the code for it which is the classic we still use now. I never left ATIS and still get a few emails per day. Now we even have pictures.

My first job after leaving military in 1970 was a computer operator. I remember using tapes to sort data that evolved into using disk drives. I remember using the paper cards to input data which evolved into using TSO (Time sharing organization) with tv monitors. It was eiry(sp) on Friday nights turning all the devices off and having a quiet noiseless room. Once time sharing started the machines ran 24/7 and never powered off.

Bought our first computer sometime in the late 90's, I think. Package deal from Wally World - came with all MS software already on it.

Didn't get internet service for a few years. When we did - it was dial up, and I'd get kicked offline when anybody called the house.

Only had the net for about one week - when computer started acting REAL squirrely! Just odd - screen saver moving about 100 mph, then computer would just shut itself off.

Sooooo, called our helpdesk guy...
He said, "It sounds like you have malware... probably a worm. I'll walk you through downloading a patch to fix it. Then I recommend you purchase some good antivirus software."

I immediately thought:
Malware???
Worm???
Downloading???
Patch for a 'puter???
Antivirus???

My, My, My... I've come a lonngggggg way, Baby! LOL

Love my puter, love the net, love my smart phone!!! Not one of those people who is continually on any of it. But dang, all of them sure come in handy.

AND allowed me the privilege of meeting all you tractor nuts...
ALSO has given me the gift of some great friends in several states around this big ol' land. I've met a few YT'ers and their wives, (always a good experience)... and though there are a bunch whom I'll likely never meet in person and get to shake their hand - they are treasured friends nonetheless!

YT is a great site... and you're all great folks!
Many thanks for all the tractor help over the years.
Many thanks to Kim and Chris for this wonderful "neighborhood"!!!

1969 to 1972 I was stationed at the Kaiserslautern Army Depot in Kaiserslautern Germany. The bbig thing at the time was everything was going to go computrized. I saw it once and it was in a building bigger than a barn. Everyday I would get punch cards telling what equit and was t be moved in and out of the shop, with the location of each item. I often think now how much easier this would have been using a laptop like we have today. I think the phones most people have today has as much power as that big unit did back then

Got an Atari 400 with cassette deck in '79 I believe.

Got on Fidonet in the 90s I suppose, that was a group of interchsined buses that set packets of messages, you would go on, grab the bunch of topics and messages you were interested in, get off line,r dad tgrough and reply, get on the next day, your replies would upload, new messages would download.

Actually sold computers for a short time in the early 80s, but they went either very high tech business or loss leader home versions from the box stores, we didn't fit either nitche.

Enjoy my time here and the people that have come and gone, don't know when I found the site but it was quite some time ago!

Paul

Ditto here, Info Sci 201 at Washington State U in 1967. Soon learned that when you got the weekly programming assignment, you'd better have the first draft of the program done that night, to have time to punch the cards (long waiting lines for the key punch machines), then run it several times to work out the bugs. If you didn't tarry, you'd have your program done for the next session of class a week later.

Bought my first computer in '82 or '83- a Franklin Ace 100, which was an Apple clone but could do more stuff. Cost over $2,000 complete, which was a chunk of change in those days.

And then a Commodore 64 with a modem where you dialed a phone number and put the handset
on the modem.Max 300 baud

First look at Computer was fall of 1962. By August of 63 was working on the largest tube computer built.

Got first computor in either 96 or 76 and have been on this site ever since.