Back when I first started in 1993 (first year of high school), I'm pretty sure the DM made everything up as we went along, but the first published adventure I recall was "Ex Keraptis Cum Amore", from Dungeon.
It took as a while longer to get hold of the original White Plume Mountain...
Everyone had a great time exploring, and the body count wasn't too high (except for one guy). The Illustration book was kinda nice, too!
I wouldn't mind running it myself, to see what I could do with the final battle scene.