Usually you'd find one BBS through word of mouth, and that one would have listings of systems which were hopefully a local number.

There usually had just the one line so users were limited to a certain number of minutes a day before they were no longer permitted to sign on. Sometimes a shareware game or new "Demo" would make to to a BBS and it might take you a week or two to download the entire thing because of time limits.

Some systems gave you extra time if you uploaded new content to encourage sharing. It was kind of a neat system, and I miss how small it was.