Even in the 90's there were flame wars going on in newsgroups (found a bunch around 96/97, searching DejaNews for opinions on whether IDE or SCSI hard drives were better), and (I'm pretty sure) bulletin boards before that.
in the '90s, in my experience. Newsgroups were certainly... well, an experience, at risk of being all tautological.
IDE vs. SCSI, though? vi vs. emacs is where it was at. Obviously vi is the superior editor. Entirely coincidentally, I prefer vi.
Edit: actually I do remember ESDI vs. SCSI spilling over into the workplace. The ESDI fans won, and then support was promptly discontinued. I didn't really have any investment in either camp at the time, but I was still all "lol" about it.
