I hung out on #C from 92-96 quite a bit. The most shocking part of your story was that people didn't recommend an ftp site where you could get anything you wanted for free.

Oh they definitely did give me FTP sites, I just didn't want to ramble too much. I think at that time I had a USRobotics 33.6 sportster and a shared line with the rest of the house. Downloading large-ish files even overnight was a no go. My mom was a school teacher and the thought of her missing a call from the district about a snow day or other calamity would have been a disaster!