What did you use your computer for, before the internet?

[Wayne]

Before the internet was a big thing, what sort of tasks did you use your computer for?

Before the birth of the Web, I used my main computer to run NASAU Beach BBS, which eventually became the site you see before you today.

Wayne

[Wayne]

"roots of amiga.org"

What sort of stuff was on the BBS?

Honestly, I couldn't possibly remember at this point (25+ years ago), save to characterize it as "legal" and "All Amiga oriented".

That, and I remember paying about $1600 for 2x 155 MEGAbyte, Full-height, 5.25" RLL/MFM Maxtor hard drives to store the MASSIVE amounts of data involved, which at the time, made NASAU Beach one of the largest single-line BBSs around.  Damned thing sounded like a geiger counter going off in my apartment 24/7.

Lots of ANSI color coding as I recall as well.  The BBS is, in fact, the reason I built my first PC (it started on a home-built 8086 with an Amber monitor, and eventually moved up through a 386 before being replaced by the web.

[Wayne]

Fair enough, and thank you for the insights

Was that 1600 per drive or for both?

$800 each as I recall.  Bought through an advert in a magazine called "Computer Shopper" when it used to be about 400 pages and weigh about 3 pounds each month (as opposed to the magazine-weight shadow of it's former self that it's faltered to these days).

[Wayne]

Before I got internet access (well, the always-on kind), the answer would be that I used my computers productively. Now they are devices for consumption in the hours between work and sleep.

Wow.  I almost completely blanked out the era of modems from my memory.

This is funny, because we had friends who worked at Universal Data Systems (UDS) here in town -- before they became Motorola -- who always kept us up to the latest and greatest speed (for a considerable price).

I also remember having to pay a local guy for bringing in Fidonet feeds every day.  

Wow.  Amazing what you forget as you get older.

Wayne