First time on the net, what did you do?

[Ral-Clan]

Okay, since we're not talking about the BBS period in the 1980s, I'll skip that....

First time on the Internet was through a University account.  I used Gopher a lot (as this was pre-WWW).   I would dial into the University's VAX with my Amiga500 using JrTerm and a 2400 baud Supra modem (no, not 28K, 2400 - but I started on a 300 baud modem in the 1980s).

One of the first things I did was e-mail a guy in Washington for some reason (I live in central Canada).  He replied while I was still in that particular session and I couldn't believe that I had gotten a written reply from across the continent almost immediately.

I remember reading the rumour - and then the confirmation - of the Commodore bankruptcy on the Usenet with this machine!

[Ral-Clan]

I used my A1200 and a 2400 baud modem to connect to the internet threw a local university. They were using something call "PINE", I can't remember what program I was using to connect but it was text only. I went to a lot of Newsgroups at the time.

That's exactly the way I did it at my (Canadian) university as well.  You used a Terminal program to log into the university's VAX mainframe, and there was something called PINE, and you searched the internet by navigating through GOPHER sites.  No WWW yet.

This was all text-based.  No graphics.