At first, my only point of access was a couple of dumb terminals on campus. Fortunately, my dad was able to borrow a 2.4kpbs modem for use on our family's PC (which I think was a 386 running Windows 3.1).
Now the dialup access wasn't IP-based so the computer at home was also acting just as a dumb terminal with XMODEM (and maybe Kermit) for file transfer. I can't remember what program I used but I'm pretty sure it was DOS-based, not Windows.