I'm commenting too much in these replies because I remember too much, but I'm going to share one last anecdote. For a while I had a case with a bolted on handle to bring to LAN parties. Then I read in a magazine where people were building computers into hard shell backpacks to take back and forth and that changed the game. If I had to guess that was 98 or 99.

Those things were super expensive at the time. I took a seasonal second job to buy one and mount my system in it. The cooling was garbage but I sure thought I looked cool dragging it to LAN parties.

In 2004ish I set up a dial up server so my dad and I could play Battle for Wesnoth. We lived across the country from each other and neither of us had reliable broadband available. However, he had free long distance calling so it was (and remains) a way to keep in touch and hang out without actually having to talk to each other because we're both terrible at that.