what was it like using the internet on Amiga in the early-mid 90s?

[CCCP alert]

Noticed iBrowse was released mid 1996. I didn't get the internet until late 1998 so Amiga was really a memory to the mass population by then but I did use it with 486 PCs and Unix workstations in 93/94 at Uni. Both HTTP snd J.A.NET.

Did anybody use their A1200 or 4000 on the internet and/or with a web browser at this time and what was it like? easy to set up, how was iBrowse and other apps for email or J.A.NET/newsgroups/FTP

[jotd]

I used it with Miami+56k modem, IBrowse, YAM. It worked. But expensive and I often used the connection at work to download stuff. I connected, downloaded my e-mails, sent the answers I had prepared offline earlier on, and hanged up.

[Trapshot]

Yea I got online with my amiga around 1994/1995 onwards.

I found it easy to setup and use, thanks to tutorials in Amiga magazines at the time.

It was such a strange experience back then to be connected to servers and be able to access resources. Later on, like others, iBrowse/Aweb, YAM were my main tools, as well as STRICQ and resources like Usenet, Aminet etc.

After that I was playing Quake on the Amiga online (albeit with a bad ping!).

Fun times.

[Rob68K]

Browsers were pointless because there weren't really very many websites worth visiting.
Mainly used IRC.
In fact, ONLY IRC really.

[lionagony]

I used to access Usenet through BBS' with the Amiga. Then probably around 1996 I got TCP/IP connection on my A1200. I had to ask a guy from the BBS to do it for me since it seemed complicated. Once he did I had no problems and used dial up with the Amiga from then until 2003. I can't remember when Miami came out but I recall getting a key at an Amiga show in Toronto from Holger Kruse himself. I preferred AWeb because it was the fastest. Also used IBrowse and Voyager and YAM and created and maintained my parent's website businesses all on the Amiga until 2003.

It reminds me of one funny story, it must have been around 1994 but my parent's got me a 28.8k modem for Christmas and I insisted it was too fancy and fast and I wouldn't need the power so I got them to return it for a 14.4

[Phantasm]

They were amazing times. I started off with a 14k4 modem that I borrowed from a friend and joined the BBS scene. That must have been around mid 94. I decided I wanted too get my own BBS up and running so by the end of 94 I had upgraded to one of the first 28k8 modems and was running my bbs on my 1200. From there I moved to an a4000 and added a serial card two additional modems and then an 040 processor.

Then I got internet access through a local provider. This opened up a whole new world. It was definitely not easy to set up. This was before Miami and before Ibrowse, aweb and voyager. We had amitcp to provide the TCP stack and amosaic for browsing. But I was most interested in joining irc and I spent many hours hanging out with the rest of the BBS sceners on irc and I added two telnet nodes to the BBS. I still prefer Amirc over any irc client I've seen on any other platform to date

I was one of the first UK BBSs to run telnet nodes (infact the very first scene bbs in UK I believe).

Those times really had a huge impact on my life. I was only active on the Amiga scene for around 4 years but they remain some of the best times of my life over 25 years later.

Nowadays I am again involved with the BBS scene. 5 years ago I remade the Ami-express BBS software for the Amiga from scratch and with the permission of the original rights holder I have continued development of that product until today

[Jope]

In the late 90s it was feasible to browse the web with a high end Amiga. So I did with my A4000/040@40 + CV64. The browsers we had then were about as compatible as any PC browser, but the Amiga was of course a bit slower than a high end PC. Regardless, many online activities were still quite feasible. With Miami and a PPP connection, it was just as easy to set up as with Trumpet Winsock. IIRC you basically needed your ISP's phone number and your login name and password, PPP auto-configured all the IP settings for you. We got cheap-ish ISDN in my home town at around the same time as I managed to get the A4000, also I got an e-waste Zyxel Prestige ISDN router from a friend's work, so I ended up doing ISDN -> Ethernet for all my computers at home, which was a lot nicer than regular POTS dialup.

As for my experience of the early 90s, I started my online adventure with an OCS A500 512/512 with 1.3 and 2.04, two floppies. Back then I dialed up to a unix machine and did my internet stuff inside a text terminal (first JR-Comm, then later upgraded to Terminus). The graphical WWW wasn't as relevant in 1993-1994 yet, so it was fine.

I was more interested in discussions on Usenet news, files on FTP servers and chatting on IRC anyway, the web browser hadn't yet become an application platform and the content on websites wasn't that important. Aside from Usenet, we got our digital news/reviews/hardware hacks via individual text files and disk magazines and such.

JANET was a very much UK thing, so I can't give any recollections on that. Never been, never seen, don't even know what you had on there.

[fxgogo]

I never used the internet on my own Amiga, but we had a user group in the early nineties which was hosted at some offices which afforded us faster than normal internet. We used it to download stuff from aminet and other sites. We were mostly using ftp and gopher.

By the the mid nineties, I had moved to PC’s and my web browsing started there.

[Daedalus]

Yep, in the latter half of the '90s, browsing the web and internet activities in general were perfectly serviceable on an expanded Amiga. Javascript was relatively lightly used at the time so wasn't the huge processor / memory hog it is now, and CSS wasn't a thing. Email, FTP, telnet and IRC all worked perfectly well, and I made many web pages exclusively on my Amiga. And later (around 2000 IIRC), we even got Napster and Jabber clients.

ISPs didn't support the Amiga of course, but I just called my ISP (at the time there was only one main ISP in Ireland and a couple of local ones) and asked for the various parameters. Put them into AmiTCP (and later MiamiDX) and it just worked. A little later, when more ISPs started appearing, they offered free trials on CD-ROM. I was able to use them too by just opening a config text file on the CD and copying & pasting the details into the dialler settings. Eventually, semi-unmetered ISPs came along, where you weren't charged by the minute for the first hour. I wrote an ARexx script that timed Miami's connections and would disconnect and reconnect automatically every 59 minutes. That helped enormously when downloading MP3s

On top of that, my Amiga was also my dialup gateway for my PC and later for my PowerMac too using MiamiDX - with a fast serial port in my A1200, the Amiga wasn't a bottleneck and could share the connection at full speed via SLIP and later via LAN. And, when I went to live on campus in uni, I found they had an awkward arrangement for the LAN setup. With my PC I would have to disconnect, then enable or disable SOCKS to use different things like Napster, but MiamiDX and the Amiga could handle it all without switching anything. Unfortunately, Flash- and JS-heavy sites were starting to become more common and the Amiga was struggling.

[talybont]

My memory is getting a little fuzzy, but I remember using TermiteTCP on my A600 (1MB RAM, 80MB HD). Most of the time was spent in AmIRC, AmiFTP for Aminet, AWeb for text only browsing.

[alexh]

My Amiga was connected directly to JANET (the academic network) in my room at university. 1995-ish? I *think* I used a Daynaport SCSI/Link adapter connected to my GVP-HD8+ but I might be wrong and it might have been something else.

I remember using FTP to download Amiga stuff from newsgroups and gopher which was a different protocol.

Used terminals to connect to MUDs and other Text based infrastructures (were there internet enabled BBS at the time?)

It wasn't until 1996 that I was using iBrowse. It was very poor with only ECS resolution / colour compared to using the Windows 95 PCs around the University but it was free.

It wasn't until 1997 when I got an Amiga A4000 with Picasso IV gfx card and an Ariadne (2?) that the internet and browsers on my Amiga became comparable to the PC experience.

[CCCP alert]

Interesting read, thanks to everybody for sharing.

I remember there were loads of rom archives and DOS emulator websites even in 95/96. The Dump was one and I somehow got the C64S emulator and a copy of Monty Mole. C64S was written by the guy who wrote the Amiga SID player and SID/Koala 100 most remembered demo. Quite a few emus supported AWE32 advanced features.

[damiraga]

In 1997/8 I was browsing the Internet on my A1200 using external US Robotics modem and Miami TCP/IP (purchased directly from Holger at Toronto Amiga show). As others have already said, you had to setup your connection details manually, but that was not big of a deal. Yam had to be setup manually as well (pop and smtp servers) but once setup it worked better than anything on a PC at that time. Yes, browsing was slow in 64+ colors, but nothing unbearable. Once I got a Spectrum RTG card, my A3000 became my main internet system. Web, FTP, chats/irc, usenet - it was all possible on a humble Amiga. Good times

[HardStep]

I recall doing internet banking on an A1200 with Blizzard1230 and 16Mb ram late 90s. I accessed web with that setup until late 2000 in parallel with PC and it was fairly usable.

[kriz]

Was all good until all got css, then flash/shockwave and java stuff that did not work.. But it was really nice, used rtg on my 4k since about 1997/98

[r.cade]

I used an A3000 at Georgia Tech around 1992-1994 with dialup shell account, and then something that would switch to SLIP over top of that.

I used e-mail and newsgroups, but there was no WWW to speak of at that time, although I think there was a version of Mosaic or an early Amiga equivalent that would work to see what was there.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by r.cade

I used an A3000 at Georgia Tech around 1992-1994 with dialup shell account, and then something that would switch to SLIP over top of that.

I used e-mail and newsgroups, but there was no WWW to speak of at that time, although I think there was a version of Mosaic or an early Amiga equivalent that would work to see what was there.

Yep amosaic.. I remember starting off with that.

[Seiya]

MiamiDX and Ibrowse with 68040@40 + AGA and modem 14k and 56k from 1997/8 to 2000/1

[nogginthenog]

When I first got online (1995?) I only had an A500 so I used to browse with the text based browser ALynx. I used Thor for usenet/emails.

[zipper]

Late 90s with 28.8k and then 56k - downloading something biger (but only MBs) took over a day...