I remember "back in the day"....

Salon.com Technology | When 300 baud was the bomb

Back in the day, there were boards. Bulletin Board Systems. BBS's. No Net, no Web, no cyberspace, nothing. Just boards, and their ugly stepchildren, D-Dials. All strung together with phone lines, hand-rolled software, and 8-bit computers. No backbone, no hubs, no routers, no DNS tables. Just one computer picking up the phone, calling another, and having a little chat.

Hey, I even had an Atari 800, though with only 48k of RAM. My friend always bragged on about his Apple //e, but he came to my machine to program (assorted flavors of Basic for the Atari) or play any kind of game...except "Rescue Rangers," which is still a kick, assuming we can find a working //e, of course. The author, BTW, has a blog at The Truth Laid Bear.