[mftb]

Yea, I'm afraid that's not so. In 1993, I was running a WildCat BBS and I was way more hyped about that and it's RIP graphics, lol. The only way I could get on the internet at all was through other peoples university accounts, which required dial-up, Trumpet Winsock, and PPP. It was a chore to get running and was very slow on the 14.4k (and slower) modems of the day. 56k modems weren't introduced until the late 90s. So yea, between 90 and 95 other technologies seemed more appealing like BBSs, Gopher and places like "The Well", at least to me.

[perl4ever]

In 1993, iirc, I borrowed a Mac and 2400bps modem from my high school that I used to call the library and AOL.

Before that, the way to get software (for me, because I wasn't a college student) was to go to a local computer store and copy their disks containing free or shareware.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Fish

But everything changed about 1995.