'82 i got an C64 with a 300/75 split modem, got so hard slapped by my mom and she even destroyd the modem after the phonebill came.
Took another 4 years before i was allowed to use a modem again.
Remember using fidonews, it was a major break for me, and started to use OS/2 instead of DOS.
Meet a guy in Skurup, outside Malmo in Sweden who did run a 7 node bbs, think that was one of the biggest board in sweden 92/93 then. We converted it from Amiga to OS/2 and we had scsi drives already then, even had to use several machines connected with Lantasic (10mbit coax network).
Around '96 I came in contact with an ISP with a 2mbit link where I had my first real FTP server and did build it up as the 'The Library' and had swedens biggest archive of 0days, i was not intrested to be first with the releaes but had an insane storage.
When i started to work at a university i was on 100mbit and it dident take long until I had move the site to that link and it became PowerTrip (PWT). FLT was quick to affilaite me and it was one of the fastest sites in Europe, '98/'99 we was ranked best site in the world and even Anthill in the states had to step down.
By then we was using all handwritten scripts/ftpd's for FLTs network and I became their tech guy for many years. Bouncers/roundrobin scripts was all made by friends of me in Denmark (Tanesha.net now), at 2004 when feds did not found our server we decided to leave the scene permanent.
Back then we had access to several c classes of networks so we was using ~ 150 ip numbers to spread the load, most sites that was creted by students was often bashed quickly by us, since it was my work to scan for sites, so one of the reasons we spead the load over so many ips that it did not even show up on my spy lists ;p
Have been doing a lot of things and that was one of my more happy days due to the fact how much I did learn in the process. Talking to feds looking for a site called PWT was not fun tho, they simple did not know who the owners was
But BBSes still have a place in my heart, it was my youth ;)