throwaway847t

Each instance could also choose which groups to distribute. Many ISPs didn't carry all groups (such as binary groups and groups in other languages) to save money, or due to the content itself (porn, warez, MP3). Sometimes they would have delays because some groups were only synced a few times a day.

This created a market for NNTP servers that provided full content for a monthly fee and sometimes even with a spam filter

Sure, but the most common way to access Usenet/NNTP servers was through graphical GUI software or "TUI" for those that preferred terminals. Most people didn't write NNTP commands directly, although I did that because I wanted to learn the protocols (same with POP/SMTP/HTTP that are surprisingly easy to get started with)

NNTP worked great with dialup. You could connect and download all the new content since the last time you were online and catch-up offline without blocking the phone line. The clients were designed to work both in both online and offline mode

I agree. Windows 9x included Outlook Express which had a built in news reader in addition to mail. If you could setup your mail you could also setup the news reader.

I think most of the ISPs that I used either had a setup program that configured it automatically along with mail/dns, or provided clear instructions on how to set it up manually.

I may be in the minority, but I actually liked Outlook Express.

Several boards use open source software, so in theory one could develop a "bridge" to Mastodon, Slack, Discord or something similar.

> and I have to go around and check them all for new posts

Some boards support RSS/Atom, and it will help finding new posts. It is not as good as the old usenet readers, but at least you save some time.