[mmphosis]

1) Apple II plus with pulse dial at 110 or 300 baud, once a week or less in 1984 and make sure nobody needs to use the phone, the program that came with the modem or my hacked up version with better throughput.

2) local phone numbers, that use of the word "server" would have been unknown to me

3) again, what's a server?

4) limited discussion, games was the focus, my memory is probably wrong

5) the abbreviated word "tech" would not appear until at least a decade later. Programming was offline in books, class and classmates; not online. It was limited, flaky chat, no "topics" except games