Computer Life Before The Internet
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.พ. 2025
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There was a brief period of time when your family might have had a computer but no internet connection. What did we even do back then? I want to explore that era of computing as someone who experienced it as a kid for a brief period of time.
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Software covered: Solitaire, Minesweeper, Hearts, FreeCell, Windows 98, Microsoft Paint, The Incredible Machine, My First Amazing World Explorer 2.0, My Amazing Human Body, Encarta 98, Microsoft 3D Movie Maker
Microsoft Hearts footage by hirudov2d: • Windows 98 Longplay - ...
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Its funny how connected we could feel with something completely offline. You knew other people were playing that game, you knew your friends could talk about it at school the next day. You knew other people were exploring their computer and reading magazines. You don't need to be actively online in a game lobby to be connected with people. I miss those times.
Not to mention Lan parties back then. You had to be social to play together and if you wanted the new cracked games you had to ask or the guy you download from would lag out if in a game :D
Word.
Real connection.
Not fake/virtual/online connection.
Computer Lab time as an elementary school kid in the 90s was the best part of the school day.
We had a PC for 5 years without Internet. Encarta was SO cool. I have so many great memories just cruising through Encarta 98 after school
🤨#NoCapp?
🤔or...
#CAPP🧐
(I'm only asking because I couldn't help but notice that despite #TheSTATEMENT That You Are #Submitting:😮😮😮:Has Clearly Admits You Own #TESTIMONIAL By The InCLUSION of Any #DeCLARATIONS &/or #ReCOLLECTIONS of EVENTS &/or/In-Relationship-To #INTENTS &/or StatesOfMind while #NOTunderOATH
Or:
WITHOUT BEING PREFACED WITH: "N.G.L."/"#ngl"
(#NotGonnaLie) TO PREVENT #WEthePEOPLE FROM PURSUING RECREATIONAL PERJURY & DETER TheUnACCOUNTABLE FROM BECOMING ETERNALLY ENGAGED WANTONLESSLY IN #TheConsequenceFreePERSUIT of #CAPP
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
☝️and ONEmoreThing:
#Ifahomosayswhat
Can You Please Respond With:
. EITHER
1. #NoHOMO! &/or #PAUSE
. OR
2. #What?
Did you use to cheat on school projects by copy and pasting parts of Encarta as well? It became an art form to hand in a copied project while making it unique enough to not be called out by the teacher in my grade 5 and 6 classes
Chris, to me the pre-internet era (to me, 1992 to 1996) was when my dad's 386 and then 486 was maintly experienced through CDs we got shrink wrapped to magazines like Joystick and PC magazine.
These CDs where fill with 700 megabytes of data to explore, demo, shareware, mod music, occasional utility and pirate software just the random cool stuff and art circulating in computer circles at the time. It was a magical time. I am working on a period accurant virtual machine to re-explore those old CDs, if I can find them !
This outfit + glasses nailed the "my dad in the 90s" look. Edit: I mean my particular dad, not sure about other dads
No yeah every dad *did* look like this in the 90s
@@KalosLikesComputersThat’s actually a biblically accurate 90s dad thing to say
I must have spent hours with Encarta 97 and a later instalment of The Incredible Machine. I agree that there is something about Encarta that Wikipedia could never recapture.
I remember the original Encarta, with the Tudor England -themed 'Mind Maze' game.
"Three chee-yas to th' Victa!"
Please make more of this. I need it.
You may all mock the old man but he’s right while you’re the ones paying for online subscriptions that they can change the conditions of at any time, or stop, it’s like buying clothes and they suddenly decide to take them away and give you something else and charge you more. That’s why books ,CDs etc actual physical mediums are always better
Back in 2005, computers were shipped with encarta, Microsoft works and Microsoft Flight simulator 2004. OEMs also supplied copies of Midtown Madness II in 2001. In 1995, wehen we got our computer, I got a CD with Lexikids (a multi media lexica with a tree, horribly dubbed into German) and Lego Island 1. We loaded every promo CD we got in the 90s which we got, like a CD from the ÖAMTC (Austrian Automobile Association), explaining how to provide first aid, which had reenactments of injuries with actors trying to speak Hochdeutsch.
This was my childhood.
Even before the internet you could dial into local BBS systems and download and play games.
0:48 - "Old man yells at cloud services"
nice one
I saw "my amazing human body" in the thumbnail and immediately clicked in the video. That one was my first PC game when I was 8! Along with Rogue Squadron and "Learning english with Rayman" (I'm from Spain). And I remember there was a mode where you had to eat and drink water in order to not die in the game, and if you survived for enough time you got a diploma or something.
I played that survival bit of the game for the video and it stressed me out so much and I actually couldn't beat it 😭 How did we play this as kids???
I played it in a library
Did they show boobs?
What no mention of BBS? The charm of dialling into a phone number and accessing rudimentary email services and chatting with a couple of others who had dialled into the number at the same time.Bulletin Board Services (BBS) came before the internet but could tie up the one phone in the home for long time.
😔
I actually cried during this just from nostalgia.
🥹 I hope you're okay! Please remember that there are always beautiful things in life that we'll look back on with rose-colored glasses, despite us not being in our childhood anymore. We should always be looking to appreciate things as they are and keep trying to make them better ❤️
@@KalosLikesComputers Bless you💖💖
I totally forgot about TIM and now I need to play it again!
Also the preloaded games felt different back then because they were included for a different reason. Today it's just cross promotion, but the games then were about helping people get used to the idea of using a mouse and interacting with the desktop. You move the physical mouse on your desk and the cursor on screen moved too, when you move it to solitaire the cursor became a hand, and when the you clicked the hand made a grabbing motion. My dad worked in IT back then (still does) and has been in several arguments with managers who wanted him to remove the games from new computers which ended up with him needing to spend a ton of time showing people how to use a mouse, which isn't very fun after a while.
Before the internet I played Doom on our 486 in DOS mode. Our OS was win 3.11.
What did I used to do on computers before the web?
MS-DOS Games. LOTS of them.
A handful of Windows-based games
P*sfarting around with Windows 3.1 : Paintbrush, changing colour schemes, tweaking .WAV files with Sound Recorder, picking icons for aforementioned DOS games.
Making my own crappy but fun programs in QBasic
Fiddling with config and autoexec files
Breaking the OS / file system completely by changing the wrong setting, or accidentally introducing a virus
Fun times!
Yeah you nailed it. Digging through disk drawers. Finding code wheels or books with decoder pages to launch games. The disk and hdd sounds with the hum of the machine. Loud clacking keyboard and a mouse with some heft to it. I miss all that stuff.
I really do think there's a point where tech is advanced enough, but also limited or primitive enough that is strikes the perfect balance and its just what you want it to be.
When you can go online, but its optional. When a game comes complete and working on a physical disc. When you can record whatever you want, but not necessarily everything all at once. When all your music is in the palm of your hand, but it doesn't require a subscription to listen. Etc, etc. Thats the sweet spot, and we've sadly passed it by. You can still experience that, but needs a concerted effort and it'll never be quite the same as it was.
I was watching a video about the 4:3 aspect ratio. The next thing I see is this in my notifications feed.
I will sleep with my eyes open tonight lol
me too and I see your comment about the same thing
yeah i'm omnipresent actually
But how i can't do that once i tried to sleep with eyes open by placing a twig in between but when I woke in the morning the twig got stuck just beside my eyeball
Okay so, an update: I did sleep with my eyes opened that night but mainly due to f -ing fireworks, nothing to do with Chris lol
Happy New Year to anyone who reads this incredible piece of information :]
This used book store near where I lived used to sell copies of shareware on 3.5" and 5.25" floppies. I bought the DOOM shareware, on 2 disks, for 8 bucks back in like 1994
Dude YES 3D Movie Maker! I didn't think you would mention it, but you saved the best for last.
I had a modem right back in the early 80s and Bulletin Boards were very similar to Reddit today. Then AOL became a thing...so folk using Encarta etc was already not that popular certainly in the UK
The Incredible Machine was one of my favorite games as a kid. Back when our library had big blue folders with CD roms you could rent for two weeks at a time and play whatever games they had available. No DRM downloads or Internet connection, just pop it in and install it then ask dad to burn it to a cd so you could keep it lol Windows 3D Movie Maker was like the holy grail of awesomeness in my eyes as a kid too. Made me want to make movies when i grew up
My Compaq Presario 2200 that I had in 1997 came with an Encarta Encyclopedia CD-ROM. I'd pop it in the drive and have hours of fun looking up stuff on it.
Nostalgia! Back in '98, we exchange 1.44MB floppy disks with Midi Melodies and GIF animations! ☺☺☺
Keep going, Kalos! Greetings from Bulgaria! 🇧🇬❤🇬🇷
I'm in Bulgaria right now, very beautiful! Cheers!
@KalosLikesComputers ☺☺☺
I played The Incredible Machine in the on a friend's old computer as a kid in the 2000s. I absolutely loved it.
I cherish the era of late 80's to mid-90's DOS games. The Sierra adventure games were favourites too. When 3D accelerated and Windows-based games began to take over in the late 90's, much charm was lost.
Ironic that you did not make this video available to be downloaded for offline viewing so I'd need to be online to see this.
i remember checking out the my amazing body cd game at the library in the early 2000s i had lots of fun
That Encarta 98 intro gave me so much nostalgia I felt like a 10 year old again.
I think that in the old times some things felt more meaningful because they were harder to get, everything came at a greater cost. The fact that almost everything is right in your hand, or at least can be obtained with relatively low effort... just kills the emotion. I don´t say that I don´t enjoy today my games or youtube but is different, lacks some emotion. In the old days browsing a CD that came with a magazine of video games were something unique, the encarta encyclopedia, music in CDs... now all of that just lives in our memories but I have lots of old cds and backups in external drives, just because you know, society may fall at any moment... and maybe, just maybe if I get my hands on a functioning energy generator and some fuel, well, at least I could enjoy some hours of good memories in the ruins of the world long gone by... 😐
What about a video on what I like to call the pre-Windows 95 era, but, you know…, not for computer dorks that were willing to spend 2 to 3K on a Windows 3.1 IBMPC compatible, but us mass market folks that went from typewriters to wordprocessors with a single line LCD screen, to wordprocessors with a single line LCD screen that you could also plug into a TV and have a sort of imitation computer (VTECH)?
I spent a lot of time at the library as a kid. Now I do that from home.
Crazy Machines is worth checking out if you like The Incredible Machine
Cool. Fun to see life before the internet depicted as a Windows.thing. The people who ran BBS's on their Apple II's and C64's in the 80's are smirking now. For me offline computing was from '84 and onwards. Life online in my own home started around '99 when I was finally living in a place with a phone line.
Well done.
Absolutely enjoyed this and reminisced...
i see porter robinson album. i subscribe. also i had a bunch of these growing up - this video is awesome. also i had the later cd-rom version of the incredible machine which needs way more love. it had a fantastic soundtrack. i also have the creators’ newish game “contraption maker” on my mac too. cheers. look forward to exploring more of your channel!
Oh my gosh! For years, I had tried to search for the name of the game which let you build using gears, etc, and BOOM I come across this video! Incredible Machines was my ADDICTION as a kid!
I love this video so much man. Miss the CD-ROM games and interactive programs of the late 90's and early 2000s!
I’m from Generation X, and first of all, we didn’t just play on computers (if anything, gaming was the smallest part of the fun). Secondly, we were interconnected through dial-up modems, using BBS systems where we could upload and download programs and other "interesting stuff" that ultimately paved the way for you youngsters to be born a few years later 😁.
Thirdly, you know, I’d never really considered this side of history before "computers before the internet". It might not be a bad idea for a video, coming from an old fart like me who actually lived through that period firsthand.
I wanted to include more aspects of that era originally, but I wanted to keep the video short and focus on the childlike wonder of it all. Thanks for watching!
I have fond memories of ‘the way things work’, the one with the mammoths
Loved this video. Made me remember the days where we had computer classes to learn the mythical ways of Word Art and why its not professional lol.
i LOVE the editing style
First played "TIM" in elementary school's computer lab, wasted so much time in this game, so amazing for it's time. I am not a boomer, am a millennial, and had an offline PC for all of my childhood. I got by through many shareware software I found in floppy disks at my local Radio Shack, these were only about $5 I think for a single shareware program, games and other productivity programs like menu software and desktop publishing.
95-98/99 we even had a version of the Internet, but it wasn’t good enough to replace all software
Many of the now old computer nerds, who started with home computers in the 80'ties, have sticked with computers all their life though, it's not like they suddently stopped using computers or programming or tinkering with it, when the internet came up. ( For example I started with C64 and Amiga in the 1980'ties, switched in the 90'ties to PCs DOS,Win 3.1, Win 95, Win 98, XP etc., I got my first high-speed internet connection as a computer science student 1996 and been basically on the internet almost every day since before google, yahoo and social media existed ... It's not like we all stopped ... But ofc I know the times, when you relied on magazines, books and teens were exchanging diskettes like crazy. 😋
Amazing content w English subtitles. What more could we ask for?
The Legend of Solitaire
Man Encarta was amazing!
Now that was a good segue. This video is evoking my childhood. Encarta at home on Windows, and all the DK stuff. Especially Human Body on the iMac in school.
That was a smooth segue.
Man, I remember a certain game studio. Although I only owned 1 of their games at the time, I had a lot of fun with it. What were they called? The one that provided a HUMONGOUS amount of ENTERTAINMENT to its child-friendly audience. I'm drawing a blank, help me out.
The Incredible Machine also had a spinoff called The Incredible Toon Machine. Which used cartoon physics. Also, before imdb Microsoft had their own movie reference CD called Cinemania.
Internet turned out to be so bad for us. Such a wonderful thing weaponized against our own limited time on this planet.
I played mega race...with Lance Boyle that's how old I am
0:38 Where dat hand come from lmao?
As empty as it can feel these days, it really never felt like that back in the day.
Yep, we had our first family computer in 1998 and didn't have the internet until 1999. I had spent time with Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia! I also played 3D Movie Maker (But by then, we had the internet)
Wait, Karlos you’re telling me there is this magical place called “Europe”?
Nah sounds made up to me.
I got a copy of Doom, Doom2 and then Quake.
Pinball came with 95 plus too
We also had our version of "Amerca's Funniest Home Videos" here in Brazil, it was called "Videocassetadas"
I can't tell you how many nights I burned with a drink, music, and solitaire.
that one aunt that bought a whole ass computer in 1997 so she could play "solitary"
Lady, a deck of cards is $2.50
Good work!
I had a computer in 1994, 2 years before I had one that could go on the Web. I mostly used it as a word processor to write.
Lost me at 4 and a half minutes in when you said a 286 was the "processor of the time" in 1993. The first Pentiums came out that year, 4 years after the 486, which was 4 years after the 386. The 11 year old 286 was the MINIMUM hardware required for it to run, not the best or even average hardware of that time. You could run Windows XP on a 486 in 2001 too, but it wouldn't be happy about it and the 486 wouldn't be the "processor of the time."
Great video!
Defragmenter is fun to watch. Watching the blocks of data reorganised visually. Dont mind watching it for hours. Now we dont see it anymore.
*before computer life: there is no habit life. only habit life was drugs.*
Loved the good old day's 😂
Trying to remember the name of a search toolbar that was added to my taskbar in the early 2000s.
Copernicus or Cornucopia?
It was like Wiki but hijacked my desktop. Would love to remember it again.
Edit: Copernic Desktop Search was the name. Still exists.
sc2000 not being from 2000 actually broke my mind...
love the 4:3 lol. Looks great on my crt monitor!
Go on the Discord and send a pic of what this video looks like on a CRT please, I'm dying to know!
In my country we had You've Been Framed! for home video submissions.
That frame rate matches hardcore 1999 on point.
We had similar experience except in the next generation. We had internet only with internet modems in 2009 which was only used by parents.
Sinclair UK was there before PCs became a regular product in our homes.
Jesus, fifth grade encarta sessions on the brand new compaq with windows 95. Good times. Im convinced innovation stopped after the internet
@Kalos Likes Computers:
Hello Kalos, great content.
P.S.: @8:12 you used the word "rudimental".
The English word you were looking for is Rudimentary.
No judgements or offense meant. Just thought might like to know. 😁✌🖖
Too much Rudimental in my playlist what can I say
@@KalosLikesComputers is it how you say it in Greek btw?
idfk lmao I speak English primarily
Edit: I guess it would be στοιχειώδης. I lied, I did know.
@@KalosLikesComputers: Oh. OK. It appears to be the same thing. I guess I'm just another US dumbass. Big surprise. 🙄🙄🤣🤣 😁✌🖖
I stared at windows in the corner how do you even play so many games same thing as watching TV without content nope i never claimed it like that we even had internet there's something wrong with it
3D Movie maker. Now I know what some of the wackiest broken 3D videos on youtube were made from.
those were the best
I was a kid of the 80s..the closet we got to a computer was a game system
If you know what x box is NOW..
WE HAD ATARI/INTELIVSION OR COLECO..AND NO DOWNLOAD NEEDED/REQUIRED..ALL GAMES WERE ON CARTAGE!!!
Magazine cd demos were the best.
i can tell you're just a couple years older than me because you didn't mention cluefinders in edutainment lol. i legit spent dozens of hours on them and my mom got me the version for every grade level for a few years
Kalos Kai agathos 💕💖
I think I cracked the code guys. Kalos... Likes... Computers...
While I don't miss having to have CD racks, I do miss defunct software like Encarta.
Also demo discs.
You missed Hover. Another included game with Windows
I... I feel like I'm being gaslit by the internet. How have I never ever heard of this game before? I had to look it up just to make sure it existed, and to confirm I have never seen it before in my life. Huh???
@KalosLikesComputers It was a classic, not everyone knew about it because if was buried on the install CD or in an extras folder or something. I don't recall it being in the menu system unless you told it to be.
We also had things like House of Games one and two, cd rom compilations of shareware, with like 600 games on them kind of deal. And of course magazine demo discs. But the mega compilations kept us all pretty busy for awhile.
The computer had a much more relaxing vibe before we all went online and lost our minds.
MS-DOS 4! You don't need to say 4 point O!
my first laptop was a Vtech toy one that had no internet connection xD
Damn you're so cool brother
7:52 what is the name of the background music?
trndytrndy - World Map
Also, Odell Down Under
Πέρης & Κάτια core
8:33 it looks like the Caspian Sea went on a diet.
Mindmaze in Encarta was the hardest game.
I tried it for the video all confident and I was humbled QUICK.
Background and choice of pullover serious 🤭
Oh hell yeah this is a very cool video!! I Had a couple of chuckles 2 !!!! I used to love those DK games!! Me n my mate quote the wizard of oz DK (game?) all the time… fr some reason? Ig cos we found out we both played it as weans!!!
Many or most people in the world were not depending on the internet as the place where they developed a personality and spent 100% of their time for two out of four decades of modern computing, this is HALF of that time, not some "brief period in time." You'd remember that if you were over the age of, what looks like, 20 years old. Not gonna use other words for your generation either. You look like you've barely ever been outside, mate.
Thank you for your kind words! Happy new year!