That sounds fascinating. Is there a good write up for someone totally unfamiliar with that world and that doesn't want to get into the weeds, but is interested in what the community was like?

Here you go: http://articles.marco.org/44

There are some references in this thread if you want to go deeper: http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/was-anybody-else-part-of-t...

This was one of the more popular programmers: http://patorjk.com/blog/programming/