Re: Green screens were great!
Similar memories from UCL in the mid 90's. We had VT100/220s in the halls connected to the timesharing system. You could log in with your IS account, browse the web with Lynx, get your mail with mutt or pine, and telnet to the library system to reserve books/manuscripts - I even used to dial in from home (direct modem PAD connection) just before the end of holidays and reserve books for the upcoming courses - I was altruistic and offered to tell others when I'd deposited them, or take requests for copies. You could also access library databases from many other institutions across the greater London area, eg the resource centre at Harrow/Northwick Park which had a lot of periodicals not available in the college libraries (you couldn't reserve without a library card though, but that was free to register for in person and then you were sorted).
Using the RS/6000 terminals with their 1600x1200 CRTs was also a joy - they were the first to get web browsers (Mosaic and later pre-1.0 Netscape) and you could just pop open another xterm to telnet into what you needed. Still didn't master LaTeX though, one day I will!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
