Try (selectively) disabling javascript on the modern web.
I wonder how slow the actual one was
Ironically (and anecdotally) I remember pages loading much more slowly back then than now, on average. People comparing the two need to remember just how much faster and better optimized computers are now, as well as the speed of broadband versus dialup.
Ironically? I assumed your grand-parent was joking. A top-end PC in 1990 was a 33MHz i486 with 4Mb of RAM and a 9600 bit/s modem.
"Ironic" in that a lot of people here complain about how slow the modern web is versus the simpler purely static web of the past, when the modern web even with all the javascript BS is qualitatively faster.
Modern sites have nothing on the awful experience of browsing the web on dialup.