I haven't been 'newly digital' for almost 20 years...

My first exposure to computers was in 1984, with an Apple ][c. My elementary school, Chief Dan George Elementary was one of the newer schools in the district. As a result, they had a 'lab' set up in one of the storage rooms of about 6 Apple ][c's.

At that point, I really didn't use the computers for anything more complicated than Aztec and LOGO. I have to publicly thank my Grade 4 teacher, Mr. Ian Harrison, however, because that was the start of the path I've taken to get where I am today.

I played around casually with those Apple ][s for the next couple of years, as well as some Macintoshes that started showing up a year or two later. At the same time, I was spending a lot of time at my friend Chris Wolstenholme's place, trying to master the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Infocom Adventure on his Dad's XT.

It was on that same XT that I had my first 'online' experience. Chris's dad had an acoustic coupler linked up to his computer, which in turn was set up to dial through Datapac to connect to various businesses. One day Chris and I were goofing around, and he said he wanted to show me something neat. He hooked up the acoustic coupler, and started dialling.

We never did successfully hook up to anything, being that we were 11 or 12, and knew nothing about the technology we were using... But it still remains my first experience online. I wouldn't get online again until 1991, when my Dad bought me my first modem for Christmas.

I didn't have my own computer until I was 15 or 16 (incidentally, I owned my first computer before I owned my first car). My first computer was an IPC 286/12, with 1MB of RAM and a 40MB hard drive and - and this is what cost me the big bucks at the time - a VGA adaptor with a color monitor. I eventually upgraded the RAM to a whopping 4MB, and the hard drive to an unbelievably spacious 105MB drive.

This did me for about a year... but then I got my modem - a knockoff of a Hayes 2400 baud. I got my modem in the heyday of the BBS Era. I connected to my first BBS in December of 1991, and I was running my own BBS by February of 1992. Although it was never an excessively popular BBS, the community there was pretty tight-knit. One of the members is on the FVLUG mailing list, and I had coffee here in Edmonton with another one of the members a month or two back.

I sold my 286 to a coworker shortly after getting my modem, for $500. The biggest selling point of that computer? It had Wolfenstein-3D on it. I swear, that's the only reason the guy bought it. I replaced it with a 386DX/40 with an Ad Lib sound card. I kept the modem.

My first experience with upgrading a computer on my own was with that very 386. As is the case with all young geeks, I needed to keep up with the Jones's. I was also putting quite a strain on the computer through running the BBS. My first upgrade was a biggie too - replacing the motherboard and CPU. I don't remember much of the experience, so I don't think anything major went wrong. I do remember at one point, later on, leaning on the case and smelling burning silicone. The case I had at that point was fairly full, and forced me to put my sound card (a soundblaster 16) in the very last case. If you leant on it just right (or, as the case may be, wrong), the circuits would make contact with the metal of the case, and short everything. Ironically, I think I still have that soundcard sitting in a box somewhere. It still works.

... a couple years pass ...

It's late 1994, and I'm running on a 486DX4/100 and a Practical Peripherals 14.4 kilobaud external modem... and the Internet has finally arrived at a reasonable cost in Abbotsford. I've run over to Aldergrove, where the ISP is located, grabbed my disks, filled out the paperwork, and driven home. In my grubby little hands are 2 disks containing Trumpet Winsock, Eudora and Netscape Navigator 2.0. I install the software as quickly as the 1.44" drive will let me, take the BBS down, and start dialling...

... and redialling...
... and redialling again...

...finally, after about 5 attempts, I connect, enter my username and password (my username at the time was 'wonko'), and start up Netscape. here's my first usenet post, written a few months later.

I literally didn't sleep that night. I had spent all night surfing the web, reading newsgroups, learning about gopher and archie and veronica... I looked for all my favourite publications, nifty companies, downloaded software.... I was amazed, and in awe, and transfixed by the amount of information I was able to find on this new medium. Yahoo was brand spankin' new at this point too - it was still a research project at Stanford (I remember the URL was hellishly long to get there. And, funnily enough, the overall look of the site hasn't improved since then either).

The first website was later in 1995... at the moment, however, I can't get through the proxies at work to go to web.archive.org.... you'll just have to picture yourself what it looked like. ;) It was less of a personal site, and more of a greater dream to help promote young writers in Abbotsford. It was the genesis of what is today nasty - at that point named solas (enjoyment). I shut the BBS down in 1996, as it was down more often than it was up, so that I could access the 'net.

So there you go... there are all my experiences of being 'newly digital'. What's yours?