My First PC was a Genuine IBM PC XT 4.77 MHz 8086 with 256 K of Ram, TWO, 5.25 inch, 360 K floppies, Color monitor and an NEC Spinrite 2550 printer. I paid $2,00 for the system!
No Hard Drive!
I remember installing my 1st hard drive, I replaced the BIOS with a Phoenix Bios, replaced the Intel chip with an NEC V30 chip, then put in a "Tiny Turbo" card, which was an 80286 chip on a 8 bit card.
I remember my 2400 baud modem, then I upgraded to a lightening fast 9600 baud modem! Man, those ASCII graphics on those BBS's really downloaded fast!
Compuserve cost me 12 or 18 dollars an hour, but you could connect at slower speeds, like 300 baud at a less expensive speed to reduce your cost.
I had a program called TAPCIS that let you upload and download message threads and software all in a batch, then hang up, and you could read all the threads in whatever forums you selected offline, then reply offline, and reconnect and upload and download all again.
Those were the days when SOFTWARE was fast, and HARDWARE was slow! Now we have FAST Hardware, and SLOW software!