A step back in time

Posted by stuart as

Nothing to do with making money online, just thought this was cool (and relevant, as my logs tell me a few readers are mac users)

I was cleaning through some junk yesterday, and came across a pile of “Australian Mac User” magazines from around 1994 to 1996.

Wow!

What a different world. All the talk was of Apple’s “E-World”, internet “starter kits” which sold for $99 (a TCP stack, Netscape Navigator 1.0, Eudora email client etc).

The memories came flooding back - 14.4kbps dialup at $7.95 an hour, text based BBS’es (then came Telefinder - WOW! A graphical BBS!), trying to get a SLIP internet connection to work.

I remember the thrill of unpacking my first (bought) mac - it was replacing a mac plus I inherited (ahhh, remember when you could actually get stuff done with ONE MEG OF RAM, and your programs AND files would sit on one floppy?). I bought a shiny new 25MHz LC475 ($2,500), with four Mb of RAM and a 160Mb HDD. I went to town on this baby, upgraded it with a ($450) 8Mb RAM stick, a ($500) 850Mb (that’s MEGAbytes, not GIGAbytes) Hard drive, and a $2,300 300DPI HP LaserJet. This was the start of my DTP empire, which eventually led to my web pursuits.
So for around $6,000, I had a computer which would now be soudly thrashed in the performance stakes by my $300 HP IPAQ 1950 PDA.

I remember the first time I decided to have a crack at web development on this machine -  I trouped off and bought myself “SAMS tech yourself Web Publishing with HTML 3.2″ (I still refer to this from time to time!). I cranked out the most horrid, frame based, garish backgrounded, layout deprived sites imaginable. But shit did I think it was cool!

Aaahh memories……..