[ufocia]

SLIP not PPP. Those are two very different protocols. Otherwise your comment is fairly accurate. There were dial-in terminals, whether more expensive or not, that could be repurposed for generic Internet access.

I don't recall whether you could technically open listening ports, at least for a single connection, using slirp, but many, if not all systems, limited opening ports under 1024 to superusers, which (would have?) made running servers on standard ports more difficult.

In any case, I'm glad that you pointed out ACM's apparent revisionist history. They should know better.