I dialed into quite a few BBSes, with my first home PC, a "portable" 8088 with a built in 2400 baud modem. Usually logged into some to play the doors based games, and download a few of the fidonet group messages for offline reading. As I put together newer PCs, Telex was always the first program I made sure to get running.

One of the BBSes had an internet e-mail gateway, and that was my first visibility onto the internet. Back then I just figured it was a bigger fidonet.