Korean Job Discussion Forums

proustme · Joined: 13 Jun 2009 Location: Nowon-gu

I got on IRC (Undernet, Efnet) in 1993 and downloaded my first MP3 file. I think it was a Third Eye Blind track. I had a Geocities webpage for no apparent reason other than to insert a flame-torch animated GIF as the background image. I made a lot of good friends in NY via a channel which became my home and where I was an @ (or OP, operator) for many years. One of my friends on there committed suicide and some of us went to his funeral in Buffalo where he was buried with a computer mouse in his hands. Another one of my friends worked as a system administrator at the Lifetime Channel. He served MP3s off their hardware on an FTP for us.

I used to visit #exceed on Efnet for software and MP3s. My IRC program during all my life was mIRC with the memorable, funny faced 'About mIRC' dialog box. My friends and I owned a lot of .nu domains which we used for shell accounts to log into IRC like: proustme (proustme.puts.the.intel.nu) has joined #computerusers rather than proustme (ad148.juno.com).

Remember 'slapping' users with a trout? The trout slapping reference goes back to the /me command in mIRC and other IRC clients which you could use when chatting in an IRC channel/room. You could type /me [action] to send a third-person message to the channel. For example, you could see this in the channel as: proustme slaps Jeremy with a large trout.

I used to be on IRC all day, idling. Using DCC send and DCC chat for private chats and file transfers was awesome. Things started really rocking when 28800 modems came out. Nearly every had a USRobotics modem. I remember countless time getting logged off or disconnected when my sister would pick up the phone. Sometimes picking up the phone wouldn't disconnect you but other times it would.

Ah, memories! There were a lot of good, honest people on IRC. There still are. Of course, today there are a lot of "script kiddies" just as there always was, but now they've got cable modems...

Mr. Pink · Joined: 21 Oct 2003 Location: China

I was a LONG time user of IRC. 1992-1993 seems about right for when I joined.

I used to hang out with a bunch of guys from Ohio on efnet. We were all into warez and computers. I was in Canada at the time.

One summer I joined a simpsons channel on efnet and we started a project to get every episode available. This guy with a university dorm line DCC'd the entire series up to that point, which was a hell of a lot of eps. All in mpg format. Way before the days of avi and divx. It took me the entire summer to get all the episodes. I burned them onto VCDs...I had a hell of lot of discs.

I haven't used IRC in years though. Pretty sure once I moved to Korea and got high speed, my IRC usage declined. I kept up with a few channels for warez, but by the time I married in 2000 I was off of IRC.

The one notable thing I recall about IRC: I was a big time curser and stopped cursing. When I joined IRC it brought it all back because everyone was swearing like a sailor. Would my mouth be cleaner now if I had stayed away? Cool

mIRC was a great program. I had a modified version that I used to use courtesy of my friends in Ohio. It was made for IRC war Smile

The good old days.

pkang0202 · Joined: 09 Mar 2007

I used to IRC back in the day. I had my own FServe, mostly anime. I remember the good old days of building up a ratio.

bassexpander · Joined: 13 Sep 2007 Location: Someplace you'd rather be.

I used to use Bitnet back in the early 90's. Send a message and it would slowly travel through servers at different universities... Urbana, Illinois was one I remember. The further away someone was, the longer it took them to get a message. Would wait 15 to 30 seconds for some people to get and send a message back.

Also remember purchasing a new computer for the fraternity -- a full-blown Gateway 2000 with a 386 CPU! Wow... what a screamer!

ppcg4 · Joined: 16 Oct 2008

I, along with a couple close friends, ran #Niagara on EFNet for years. We were in constant battles with other groups to keep control of it, but we ultimately came out on top.

Then came MSN messenger.

#Niagara is still open on EFNet, but I don't use it anymore. Man those were the days... botnets, rootkits... remember the ping of death? Backorfice... ahh memories.

Pangit · Joined: 02 Sep 2004 Location: Puet mo.

EFnet pissed me off. I switched to DALnet pretty quickly.

The Lemon · Joined: 11 Jan 2003

I was also an IRC'er, 1993ish. #canada on EFNet. I can remember IRC being banned on college campuses because it "used too much bandwidth", and the IRC client that ran on the college VAX mainframes (along with the other favourites- telnet, talk, gopher(!) and finger) was crazy slow. Still, it blew my Middle East History professor away when I showed him how I could interview someone in Israel just by going to #israel and asking for some opinions.

Much time was wasted, but we learned about the real Internet back then and probably have a deeper understanding of how it all works than the kids that think they're hardcore when they point their mice at utorrent.

pkang0202 · Joined: 09 Mar 2007

I'm sure most of you in the IRC back in the day also did a lot of BBSing.

I remember when I upgraded my modem for 2.4k to 14.4k. ANSI never looked so beautiful.

AD35 · Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2010 5:36 pm Post subject:

Man I seem young compared to you guys starting in '93. I started IRCing in '98 doing some of those chat-muds or something like that on EFnet like everyone else.(can't remember the name). Anyways, I rarely use IRC since the invention of torrents, but I still use IRC from time to time to find those rare files.