Ran one myself for 5 yrs.  I still have my old ANSI files dated 1993.

[url]http://www.ecis.com/~weasel/t1/t1.html[/url]

[img]http://www.petenelson.com/Photos/Misc/Misc/Terminal%20One%20Main%20Menu.gif[/img]

I had an Atari 800 with the modem that needed a phone handset to be snapped in it.

[b]B[/b]ulletin [b]B[/b]oard [b]S[/b]ystem.

Essentially, what we are on now, minus graphics, internet access, mouse interface, and ASCII Art (oh, and only 10 users or less at a time, depending on how many phone lines your favorite BBS had).  Gawd I loved some of the ASCII Art back then...  No IP/web/telnet/ftp, it was dialup to a text interface forum (group/thread/chat/files/etc.)  MobyTurbo Zmodem!

Then the Internet came along, and allowed all sorts of undesireables to pointy-clicky their way to being pricks.

Times haven't changed.  People are so huge when behind a monitor and keyboard, and when you call them on it In Real Life (IRL), they backpaddle.

I was a SysOp in college, got sick of it (bullshit users whining...), sold the setup to a friend (Amiga, Whopping 2400 baud modem), was asst. SysOp.  

Biggest transition I have seen from 'back them':  p0rn was 256 color .GIF like 300x200 MAX, (all modem connections), and then there were the .GL movies, The cool people had 256 color VGA, the rest had 16 color (sixteen color, not sixteen million color...) when you look what has happned in the past 15 years, it is freaky!!

-- Edited to add: "I was gonna fix typos, but just can't seem to care enough right now.

I used to get on Westside, The Abyss, and Boot Hill in SoCal.

Oh man...I remember those days.  I was building 8086's with a single 5.25 floppy and CGA monitor from free parts and selling them for $50 to all the new modem junkies.  It's hard now to believe we were running anything at 300 baud (for those that don't remember, the text finally started appearing on the screen faster than you could read when we got 2400 baud).

My first setup was a C64, then an 8086.  Later I got a 8086 laptop with a 10 MB hard drive, 720K floppy and a lcd screen - and that was badass back then.