Well, I pulled on a few threads and churned up one of the most specific mentions of Portal that I've managed thus far in an archival copy of an amateur radio magazine:

https://microship.com/portal-system-73/

It cost $10/month (which I now remember) and confirms use of Telenet to reach it.

There is also a Wikipedia entry, but it mostly focuses on Portal's evolution into telecom software and later purchase by, of all things, Oracle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_Software

#retrocomputing #vintagecomputing

@halfpress I go my ham radio license* solely to get access to the internet by packet radio. I wasn’t sure how that would work, but I figured I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

* I never got the license! I passsed the codeless test, days before moving to Virginia, and the paperwork got lost. But I got dial-up internet access months later, so ham radio was forgotten.