Computers were quite prevalent and useful before the notion of cloud computing, or the Internet.

Before the public was unleashed upon the Internet in 1992-1994, there were methods of information storage, indexing, searching, and exchange that didn't rely on real-time communications mediums operated by third parties. Example: CD-ROMs looked promising, the early 90's was smack in the middle of the "Multimedia" hey-day and gobs and gobs of data on nearly any subject was available and browseable at your perusal.

Of course it wasn't globally searchable, but there wasn't anything stopping anyone from making a master global index of CD-ROMs, selling it, and perodically updating it. Somebody (multiple somebodies) probably did. Libraries have been doing that for many decades. Replace chat with in-person meetups. Computer clubs were a thing in the 70s and 80s. DVDs still exist. DVD drives are $20 at my local Wal-Mart. SD cards are cheap and massive (1.5TB SD cards are a thing now).

Operating systems didn't always support TCP/IP. It's still something you can just turn off on a few of them.