there was a chat function, which unlike the flie transfer function (derived from FTP) was derived from IRC

in social terms, who the fuck cares about the underlying code

there was a main channel for each given server and possible side channels, and private messaging and you were expected to have a bot, and a bot user, if you had a server

there were also file directories this was the FTP part it was all about file transfer and this was the era where user-end and server connections where 14.4 to 28.8 to 56k to T1 and T3 (mythical)

cable became a thing it was understood between 56k and T1

people would host servers on T1+ from businesses and colleges on the understanding that this was an unapproved but worthy thing, especially after business hours (5pm local on, this was back when there were “local hours” because the internet hadn’t yet made everything everything)

you would download user-end software mostly games and photo/video/music processing software and also pornography

a lot of pornography

just like early p2p