Late 90s, a used 44kb modem card that I fitted myself, a cable in the phone line to dial an 0800 number for a free ISP that someone at school told me about, and only when my Dad was out because he didn't trust the internet. When the car pulled up, I'd plug the phone back in and spool up the trip-hazard running down the stairs.
If you're old enough to remember the noise dial-up made, you can probably hear it in your head now. When it stopped, you were online and could start looking for... something. For me it was typing in the URLs of mountain bike brands that were printed in the back of magazines. There was no Google, but Lycos was the search engine of choice. The technology was so new I didn't really know what to search for, not really understanding it could be anything at all.
My connection now is 70mb and it handles my job, entertainment, when some of the lights come on. Waking up this morning to find that it was down meant that massive inconvenience of having the use the always-on portal to al of human history and knowledge that I keep in my pocket.