Dates me…

• You connected to BBS’s and not the Internet
• You would have a specific “Level” of access on the BBS and you had to know someone to get to a higher level where there were more features and downloads
• A BBS only had so many telephone lines, sometimes just 1, so you often got a busy signal
• Modems were 300 baud
• You would manually dial the number, wait for the right signal and then turn on your modem
• You could get a modem that was a rubber cradle for a telephone, just like the one used in the classic movie War Games
• Cassette tapes were the standard storage mechanism
• 5 1/4” floppies were for the serious players and hard drives cost thousands of dollars
• 5 1/4” floppies were either single-sided or double-sided. I used to buy the single-sided because they were cheaper and just use a hole-punch to make them double-sided
• There was a lame keyboard you could get for your Atari to try to make it look like a computer
• If you knew how to hit Ctrl-C to break a program, then type “run” to start it again, you were a computer expert