bygonebytes 30th Anniversary
It's hard to believe I started this web site just over 30 years ago! I was moving on from the Acorn Electron and the Amigas and had built my first 486 PC and I included an internal modem with the hope of connecting to this new fangeled thing called the internet. I contacted Demon Internet to enquire about monthly costs and it worked out just about affordable..the phone call costs on the other hand were expensive due to calls being mostly 'Long Distance' as the local PoP was usually busy so I had to consider carefully how often I dialed in.
14.4K modems were the norm back then. Internet Explorer, I think was at version 2 and Netscape at v1 was the preferred browser.
On taking out a subscription I then had to learn the basics of HTML and my first web site was up and running. I called it Morts Abode, I had been reading Terry Pratchetts Disc World books!
One of the pages shows a real bit of vandalism to an Electron.
At the start Demon Internet had only a handful of telephone numbers to dial into (a lot of engaged tones!) but that soon changed as they pioneered virtual PoPs (Points of presence) which allowed for Local Calls and NTL, my telephone provider, charged just 1p/minute - that was a game changer.
Demon also introduced their own magazine, Demon Dispatches, to keep customers abreast of new developments.
Here are the front covers of the first two issued.
After Demon I moved supplier a few times, Freeserve, NTLworld and Freenetname. Freenetname allowed me to host the site under it's own domain name 'walkerworks' and I renamed the site as 'Online Computer Museum'.
But when I wanted to move suplier to 1&1, Freenetname wouldn't allow me to take my web site domain name without paying a large fee so in 2003 I chose a new domain name, byegonebytes - a play on words 'bye' and 'gone' but I grew tired of that and in 2007 I finally changed it to bygonebytes.co.uk where it has remained for 18 years and counting.
I eventually got 'walkerworks' back after Freenetname closed and the name went back into the pool of domain names.
Under the bygonebytes name I gave the site a make over..the start of how it looks today.
All the changes have been documented on the home page under the heading 'What's New'.
A snapshot of the site as of 02/12/25:
