LOLing at technology prices in 1984

[FixedGear]

This morning I was reading about Ozzy Osbourne's Bark at the Moon (:rofl: ) on Wikipedia, and came across some sentences about Canadian James Jollimore, who killed a mother and her two adult children after apparently listening to the record. I thought it was interesting because when I was a kid in the 1980s, anyone over the age of about 20 or so was convinced that satan and heavy metal music were going to take over their children and turn them into a generation of serial killers.

So anyhow, I googled this James Jollimore guy and found this news article from the Montreal Gazette from September 1984: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1946&dat=19840927&id=9GUxAAAAIBAJ&sjid=oqUFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1943,3922296&hl=en The article is pretty lame, but the bottom half of the page is a giant ad for an electronics store, check out the prices on these things - 1984 price (and 2015 inflation-adjusted equivalent in parentheses)

RBI desktop computer with green monochrome display $1029 ($2,385.21 today)

Sony Betamovie video camera $1899 ($4,401.86 today)

20" Trinitron color TV $949 ($2,199.77 today)

Beta VCR $1099 ($2,547.47 today)

cassette deck $499 ($1,156.68 today)

It's crazy to think that 30 years later, we're all carrying around tiny little devices that do all of these things and way more, with way better quality and way more power and it only costs like $300.

[Tik-Tok]

You can thank cheap overseas sweatshops for that :rofl:

[ZenOps]

I remember the days when you had to use a special pair of tweezers to extract and put memory chips in 8 at a time.

Hundreds of dollars for Kilobytes of memory in 8-bit computers, and that was early 80's.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2534312/operating-systems/the--640k--quote-won-t-go-away----but-did-gates-really-say-it-.html

[spikerS]

As a kid, I still remember renting a VCR from the video store and renting 3-4 movies to watch on it over the weekend with my parents.

It was a big deal when my dad showed up one day with a microwave too, because it was viewed as a pure extravagance item, and cost a boat load of money.

[ZenOps]

I still know people who spent $100 per laserdisc (not even including player)

Ouch.

[r3ccOs]

Originally posted by ZenOps
I still know people who spent $100 per laserdisc (not even including player)

Ouch.

ooh the quality of laserdisc!!! funny thing is, I'm pretty sure most of the Asian restaurants that still have Karaoke setups, still have a collection!

uncompressed 16bit audio and I think a pretty sharp picture at the time, made for some awesome Dolby Pro Logic Top gun at my uncle's home theatre at the time.

hipsters don't get any ideas, this format is truely dead, no matter how Ironic it is to put a Analog 45 sized disc into a digital laser reading appliance

[rx7_turbo2]

Originally posted by spikerS
It was a big deal when my dad showed up one day with a microwave too, because it was viewed as a pure extravagance item, and cost a boat load of money.

I remember my dad coming home with an Amana Radarange, it was the better part of $1200, he felt like a major baller:bigpimp:

[rage2]

I still have a decent laser disc collection. Beyond's last concert before the lead singer's death:

http://i1213.photobucket.com/albums/cc475/rage2amg/A50D5E39-2A58-44B7-93AE-07E2BCBD5941_zpsq8yyldph.jpg

Also have some uber rare Guns and Roses concerts on LD, well it was rare till they finally released it on DVD 20 years later.

[Kloubek]

Our family had one of the first home microwaves available for retail sale. Panasonic, I believe. I'm pretty sure my father still has it in his kitchen.

We also had a very early top-loading VCR.

My parents were cheap, but I guess they splurged on things as long as it suited them. Meanwhile, I was getting my ass beat at school for wearing acid-wash Jonathan G jeans from Zellers. (Plus I was a bit of a loser. But I think it was mainly the jeans)

[ICEBERG]

Year 1975. Still remember the day my dad brought it home. I think back then he paid little less then $100 for it.

http://s206301103.websitehome.co.uk/museum/picts/pong.red.jpg

Then i had my first computer in 1983. The Commodore 64. Paid like $500 for it. Probably 2K in today's dollars.

http://oldcomputers.net/pics/C64-left.jpg

My first walkman was a Sony. Also early 80's.. Remembered saving my money for it.

http://www.liketotally80s.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/sony-walkman-ii-1.jpg

Atari 2600, Atari 800XL, Apple IIc, Could go on and on... What memories...:thumbsup:

[Mar]

I remember how luxurious it was to have a television and wheeling it from room to room because there was no way anyone could afford more than one.

[Graham_A_M]

Jeez, I should take a pic of this RCA home stereo my uncle bought back somewhere between 1977- 1980, it's huge, about the size of a fridge laying on its side. It was absolute top of the line, he paid $2k for it back then.... Fuck that would be ridiculous money today.

Even by today's standards it sounds very very good... we still have it and use it at the farm. Just gorgeous with its ornate wood work.

Holy... it pounds though, enough to shake the walls. From that Era, I'm quite amazed by it. Not at all bad for two 10" woofers.

[FixedGear]

^^post it :thumbsup:

[Graham_A_M]

^ I would if I had a pic of it, damn I never thought to take one. I'll have to do it using Google images as I'm using up a shit ton of data looking for it. So I'll update this post tomorrow when I'm not on my phone :(

[Mar]

Originally posted by Graham_A_M
Jeez, I should take a pic of this RCA home stereo my uncle bought back somewhere between 1977- 1980, it's huge, about the size of a fridge laying on its side. It was absolute top of the line, he paid $2k for it back then.... Fuck that would be ridiculous money today.

Even by today's standards it sounds very very good... we still have it and use it at the farm. Just gorgeous with its ornate wood work.

Holy... it pounds though, enough to shake the walls. From that Era, I'm quite amazed by it. Not at all bad for two 10" woofers.
It probably uses tube amplifiers, a lot of audiophiles go nuts over those because of the sound quality produced by them.

[Graham_A_M]

^ yeah. Tube amps produce what's called 2nd and 4th order harmonic distortion, which the human ear finds to be warm and mellow or "easy listening", while 3rd and 5th order harmonics are quite brash and metallic sounding. Solid state (transistor) amps produce little 2nd and 4th order HD, but produce more 3rd and 5th order HD, so it's not hard to see why audiophiles love tube amps so much. Now modern day amps have been tweeked towards this, but it seems tube amps will always have a following because of this. It gets 100 times more technical then this in reference to the speaker material choices and on from there, but there are many ways to compliment these characteristics or counter act them (actually that's really just the very tip of the iceberg). Alas that's FAR beyond this thread so I won't touch on any of that now.

[ZenOps]

One of the best investments ever made was in a piece of cheap ceiling accoustical tile to shroud my main computer case in.

It easily halves fan noise (and for many years, the random annoying harddrive noises) I was thinking about making a custom lined accoustical box for the Xbox 360 as well (the later version PS3 slim is nearly silent)

The components in the computer may have changed over the decade hundreds of times, but nothing has survived all that time, and consistenly been useful, except the sound absorbing tile.

[r3ccOs]

Originally posted by Graham_A_M
^ yeah. Tube amps produce what's called 2nd and 4th order harmonic distortion, which the human ear finds to be warm and mellow or "easy listening", while 3rd and 5th order harmonics are quite brash and metallic sounding. Solid state (transistor) amps produce little 2nd and 4th order HD, but produce more 3rd and 5th order HD, so it's not hard to see why audiophiles love tube amps so much. Now modern day amps have been tweeked towards this, but it seems tube amps will always have a following because of this. It gets 100 times more technical then this in reference to the speaker material choices and on from there, but there are many ways to compliment these characteristics or counter act them (actually that's really just the very tip of the iceberg). Alas that's FAR beyond this thread so I won't touch on any of that now.

I personally use a Tube Power amp from Primaluna, but only for low wattage, effecient applictaions.

Tubes distortion occurs quickly when the amp reaches the limtiations of their headroom, which typically is at low wattage, high voltage applications and as you mention, provide the most "musical" 2nd (just one octive above) and 3rd order harmonic distortion

It is a warm "thick" sound, with a beautiful midrange, BUT details do become muddled in the distoration... but it is a beautiful sound

the issue is... its still distortion, and though providing some warmth, you reach the limited output of volumn quite quickly on speakers demanding load.

A EL34 triode amplifier in class A with the right tubes will produce such a blissful tone, that sometimes you forget about the other elements of what provides accurate or neutral sound reproduction (i.e. lacks punch, soundstaging becomes limited, lacks details)

it truely is a romantic sound

that being said, Amplifiers from the 70->80s before the black era (late 80s->90s) used to produce amazing amps... Marantz, McIntosh, Luxman, Sumo, Sansui

I found that these amps, though far from effecient, were of tremendous quality... good warmth, weight and grip. They do however lack the finess and detail of modern day amplifiers.

[BigMass]

our first 386 cost about 3k. Our Betamax and super vhs were about $1000 each and out TV was $1000. You had to be middle class to have that type of stuff and most families just had one of each. The family computer or the family TV. Rarely did the average household have more than one. When we got our first 27" TV I thought it was the best thing ever. Can still remember all the dubbing of movies at the time. In our school we were passing around a copy of Bloodsport that was a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. So terrible lol. As for laserdiscs, I don't know anyone that jumped on that bandwagon unless they were rich and wanted to show off. Immediately people thought it was stupid based on how unwieldy it was. A movie might come on 4 discs or 2x2 sided discs that you had to flip over every 20 minutes unless you had the ultra fancy player that wouldn't require the flipping. So bad. That format was DOA. A lot of video stores that invested heavily into it went bankrupt because of it.

[Pacman]

Originally posted by ICEBERG


My first walkman was a Sony. Also early 80's.. Remembered saving my money for it.

http://www.liketotally80s.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/sony-walkman-ii-1.jpg


Yours looks like the Walkmann 2. I can beat that as I had the Walkman 1 back in the early 80's. Looked just like your red one, but mine was silver. Had the same "case" where you can to slide the metal bar on top to pull out the walkman and I also had the external battery case. I think mine came with silver headphones with orange foam padding and an orange "mute" button.

That was a great walkman and quite small compared to the later models in the 80's and 90's. It felt really solid and good quality.

[BigMass]

of course, any serious discerning shopper in Calgary in the 80s will be familiar with the ultimate "shitter mag"

http://www.cdarchive.ca/Consumers-1987-1988-Preview.jpg

[clem24]

Originally posted by BigMass
That format was DOA. A lot of video stores that invested heavily into it went bankrupt because of it.

Format wasn't widely caught on in North America but was hugely popular overseas, mainly for Karaoke because of it's multi-audio track ability.

[raceman6135]

Digital Audio Tape (DAT) -- now there was a short-lived format:

http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/drupal6/sites/default/files/museum/photo_11.JPG

[Nitro5]

I remember my first computer for university was a DX-2/66. Cost $2000. Only thing faster was a Pentium 60 which was around $5000

[bspot]

Modern tech compared to what we are talking about, but I still have my MiniDisc player.

I don't care what you say. They were awesome :rofl:

[frizzlefry]

Long live the turbo button. I needed it to play Wolfenstein. Although getting juiced up on jolt and playing it at hyperspeed without the turbo on was pretty fun.


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Casebuttons.jpg/220px-Casebuttons.jpg

[GQBalla]

Anyone remember BBS?

[r3ccOs]

we just get so much more value for dollar these days :)

[frizzlefry]

Originally posted by GQBalla
Anyone remember BBS?

Saw my first naked chick on one :)

[clem24]

Originally posted by GQBalla
Anyone remember BBS?

Tech Talk was the shit. Anyone here used to be on Board 12 (comp sound I think)?

http://bbslist.textfiles.com/403/

[Inzane]

Originally posted by BigMass
http://www.cdarchive.ca/Consumers-1987-1988-Preview.jpg

God I miss that store.

As a kid I loved going there for Atari 2600 games and Gi Joes etc.

There pricing always seemed better than everwhere else too at the time.

[ZenOps]

I was pre-BBS.

Back in the day, it was far more cost-effective to order media on floppy disk for certain types of shareware than to pay by the hour for a dialup connection.

[spikerS]

Originally posted by frizzlefry


Saw my first naked chick on one :)

ASCII?

Every BBS I was on back in the day was either on a orange or green monochrome monitor, and it was all text base. Graphics of any kind were non-existant...

[carson blocks]

Originally posted by ZenOps
I was pre-BBS.

Back in the day, it was far more cost-effective to order media on floppy disk for certain types of shareware than to pay by the hour for a dialup connection.

I used to love the stores that would have those $5 shareware racks with the 3.5" and 5.25" floppies of shareware games. I first played Wolfenstein 3D thanks to one of those.



Originally posted by spikerS


ASCII?

Every BBS I was on back in the day was either on a orange or green monochrome monitor, and it was all text base. Graphics of any kind were non-existant...

I remember the same, but you could download files too and view them later in your image viewer program if you were lucky enough to have a CGA/EGA/VGA monitor. If I recall, you'd see a stream of the ASCII characters that made up the .jpg or whatever marked by a ---start of file --- and ---eof----, and the program I used (qmodem?) would store them and you could save the ASCII text received as n00dz.jpg or whatever. Then you hoped it was a good one as you'd spent 45 minutes of your life working with your shitty 286 and 2400baud modem just to view that one 320x400 photo in all it's grainy 8 or 16 colour glory. . And if someone picked up the phone 3/4 the way through, you were fucked and had to start again.

Kids have it just too easy nowadays.

[Tik-Tok]

Originally posted by spikerS


ASCII?

Every BBS I was on back in the day was either on a orange or green monochrome monitor, and it was all text base. Graphics of any kind were non-existant...

Lol, downloadable pics,
...............one................
line...............................
.............at.....................
......a.............................
...............................time.

Took 2+ minutes for a decent quality pic.

I remember playing a lot of Legend of the Red Dragon on BBS's though, lol.

http://imgur.com/HWFErMF

[speedog]

frizzlefry, carson blocks, spikerS, Tik-Tok, et al - you guys amuse me with your tales of woe.

[blownz]

Originally posted by BigMass
of course, any serious discerning shopper in Calgary in the 80s will be familiar with the ultimate "shitter mag"

http://www.cdarchive.ca/Consumers-1987-1988-Preview.jpg

Circling items in here is how my parents...I mean Santa... knew what to get me for Christmas. :)

[Maxt]

Originally posted by BigMass
of course, any serious discerning shopper in Calgary in the 80s will be familiar with the ultimate "shitter mag"

http://www.cdarchive.ca/Consumers-1987-1988-Preview.jpg
They use to sell "personal massaging wands"....:rofl: :rofl:

[frizzlefry]

Originally posted by spikerS


ASCII?

Every BBS I was on back in the day was either on a orange or green monochrome monitor, and it was all text base. Graphics of any kind were non-existant...

Real pics, for the time anyways. I'm sure they would be potato cam these days. I found about 5 local numbers, as i recall, that would give a 2 day trial or so. Kept changing my login name. Got blacklisted twice. I was cutting edge fapping. My parents were "wholesome" so no playboys to steal. I owe my interest in technology, which evolved into my career, due to my need to whack off as a 14 yr old.

Edit: @carson blocks: exactly! Fawk, i remember that! Damn it wasn't easy. Then i got a KFlex modem and nucleus dialup internet account for christmas. Fapping, er, education, increased.

[Wakalimasu]

I remember they used to print a BBS list in the free computer paper that was handed out at computer shops.

And then there was the underground BBS list where you can Dl some "warez" haha.

I remember spending my teenage years on octapode then nucleus. Until I discovered IRC.

[cancer man]

I bought my first watch at Acme Novelty in the Hood.

[rage2]

Originally posted by clem24
Tech Talk was the shit. Anyone here used to be on Board 12 (comp sound I think)?

http://bbslist.textfiles.com/403/
Who can name all the beyonders on that old ass list? haha

[clem24]

Originally posted by rage2

Who can name all the beyonders on that old ass list? haha

Holy shit no idea you used to run a BBS. :eek: Not surprising I suppose.

[carson blocks]

Originally posted by frizzlefry

I found about 5 local numbers, as i recall, that would give a 2 day trial or so. Kept changing my login name.

I forgot all about that. Getting the list from the back page of "The Computer Paper" and going from free trial to free trial.

Originally posted by frizzlefry
I owe my interest in technology, which evolved into my career, due to my need to whack off as a 14 yr old.

I probably owe a good part of my career path to it as well. If it wasn't for that and games, I'd have never learned how to upgrade hardware, how networking worked, etc. When I got out of high school it was my only real skill and working in warehouses blew, so career path chosen.

Originally posted by frizzlefry
Edit: @carson blocks: exactly! Fawk, i remember that! Damn it wasn't easy. Then i got a KFlex modem and nucleus dialup internet account for christmas. Fapping, er, education, increased.
Nucleus used to give a 14 day free trial every 6 months if I recall. Those two weeks were like Christmas. Eventually I saved up $144 for a year of 14.4 Cadvision service, which happened to coincide with getting my first SVGA monitor (14"!) as a gift. That was a glorious moment for a 14 year old!

[BigMass]

More "tech" in the 80s Calgary edition. Anyone remember when Crossroads flea market (in it's glory days) used to have eastern bloc immigrants selling porn on 5 1/4 floppy disks lol.

[rage2]

Originally posted by BigMass
More "tech" in the 80s Calgary edition. Anyone remember when Crossroads flea market (in it's glory days) used to have eastern bloc immigrants selling porn on 5 1/4 floppy disks lol.
I bought my porn the proper way. A fake letter and cash given to my younger brother to hand over to the Macs clerk, which says that I couldn't walk because I'm paralyzed, and to put the dirty magazines in a brown paper bag so my son can bring it home. :rofl:

To this day, I still can't believe that worked for so long.

[carson blocks]

Originally posted by rage2

To this day, I still can't believe that worked for so long.

I can't believe that would work once! Clever idea though.

[spikerS]

Originally posted by carson blocks


I can't believe that would work once! Clever idea though.

I used to do that to get cigarettes when I was under age. Worked about 1/2 the time. And once you got 1 clerk to buy into the scam, you hit him all your could.

There was nothing worse than having a nic fit, and finding a new clerk at the counter...

[Gman.45]

I have my first Walkman still as well, and my Walkman "Sports" that came out a few years later, the yellow one everyone and their dog had that was "water tight"..sort of.

I have a huge LaserDisc collection as well Rage - let me guess, Video and Sound downtown Calgary? I used to live there. I met Colm Meaney (from Deep Space 9 at the time) as well as Sam Neil (Jusaric Park) while shopping in that store. I have over 250 discs, some great Star Wars lasers, and so on. When DVD came out, it was bittersweet. I have hundreds, as in nearly 1000 VHS tapes, so I felt the pain of change over 3x time, VHS to laser, to DVD, and now effing BluRay. I don't find myself buying discs often with the advent of streaming/digital media, just films I REALLY like and want to show off home theater with, or watch in 3D. Not much 3D out there on the net yet, at least nothing I've found so far.

Remember the discmen as well? So many folks had the car adapter for their Sony Discman, with the casette jobby/cord adapter. Good times. It's amazing how far we've come, especially with computers.

My Uncle owned the first Commodore distributorship in Western Canada back in those days, my first PC was a PET, it was well over 1000$ at the time. A Commodore 64 made that look ancient. Even my first PC, a 286, was 2000$ when all was said and done, with a hard drive a magnitude smaller than a single stick of RAM in my gaming PC now.


Consumers distributing, now that brings back memories, I used to pour over that thing, picking out electronics, toys, sports equipment...great stuff.


Did anyone else in the early 2000s get into the whole mini-disc music system? I had 2 Sony players, it was sort of JUST before MP3s got big, my next unit was the first Ipod that make the clicky sound when you used the disc, it's still alive somewhere around here as well.

Now all the above can be found in the crapiest cell phone for 100$. I see iPhone 4s' going for 100$ or less all over used. Crazy.

[rage2]

I was at Video and Sound downtown quite often, but mostly rentals. Only bought a few LDs from them, most of my collection is rare shit that they couldn't get and I sourced a lot of it though the early days of ebay. Interesting V&S history, the short chubby chinese guy, can't remember his name is a huge film nerd. Back in the day, when he went to Fowler, he would have private porn showings at the pool hall/arcade across the street for friends. Full on projector and film reels of porn before videotapes were invented haha. Now that's old school porn acquisition. I'm not that old, just had older friends that went to school with him.

As for minidisc, I adopted the format big time and stretched the lifespan as long as I could. Had it in all my cars, as recent as 2001 before I switched to video screens.

[clem24]

Originally posted by Gman.45
Remember the discmen as well? So many folks had the car adapter for their Sony Discman, with the casette jobby/cord adapter. Good times. It's amazing how far we've come, especially with computers.

Haha funny you mention this because these adapters live on:

http://www.ionaudio.com/products/details/cassette-adapter-bluetooth

[BavarianBeast]

I found my waynes world cassette tape last night. My ding-a-ling is a great song.

[Tik-Tok]

Originally posted by clem24


Haha funny you mention this because these adapters live on:


They aren't bad either. I went through several FM transmitters for my Audi, and a $5 cassette adapter from princess auto had less white noise then a $100 transmitter. (2003 and Audi still had OEM cassette decks, lol)

[frizzlefry]

I used to have one of the first major MP3 players, the Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox. The MP3 player that looked like and was the size of a diskman. Battery life was about an hour if you were lucky, 6GB of storage.

Just checked, its an antique! A new one is selling for 300 bucks on amazon. :rofl:

[ReasonOne]

My father had an Osborne 1 "portable computer".... If you can call 27 lbs portable lol.

He lost a considerable amount of money on the stock back in '83, and he got so mad about it one day he hurled it across the dining room through the pane glass door.... Where it promptly landed in the swimming pool.

I remember how badass people used to think he was lugging that thing around. Definitely a classic today.

My brother was taking computer science at the time and he had a TRS-80 "known as the Trash 80"..... Before that he had a Commodore PET!

[carson blocks]

Originally posted by ReasonOne
My brother was taking computer science at the time and he had a TRS-80 "known as the Trash 80

I've still got a Trash 80 Model 100. Apparently the Model 100 firmware was the last MS product Bill Gates coded himself.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Radio_Shack_TRS-80_Model_100.jpg/1280px-Radio_Shack_TRS-80_Model_100.jpg

[FixedGear]

Yep I had a Commodore PET also, complete w cassette tape drive.

[thetransporter]

the interesting thing is not the cost of what that stuff cost in the 80s but they probably all still work very well.

so cost is probably justified.

[ZenOps]

Computer technology was mostly built with obsolescence in mind.

Intel chips since about the Pentium 90 are rated to run for 10 years. After which, they are much like lightbulbs - they will with certainty eventually burn out.

Ram chips have a duty cycle as well, and surprisingly are very stressed inside of HDTV's that have 120 and 240 hz "smoothing". If you really like the smoothing effect, it can shorten the lifetime of the RAM chip dramatically, down to a couple years. After which if the RAM fails, it just reverts to a non-smoothed videomode but is still usable.

Noone used their Pentium 90 for ten years, just like noone used their 33.6K dial up modem for ten. It became technologically obsolete long before the transistor decay (light bulb burning out) ever became an issue.

Multibillion $ satellites are designed to last 12 years.

[codetrap]

.

[C_Dave45]

My first computer was an XT 286. I had this huge 20 mb hard drive.

I actually wrote a data base in DOS that would look after all our inventory for Paul Mitchell Hair Care products for ALL of Canada.

I used a software package called SMART. Similar to Office. Had a database, spreadsheet, word processor etc. That was 1986. And had just had our first kid!! :eek:

[ZenOps]

Originally posted by codetrap
I guess I'm noone. We still have a P100 running dedicated box.

You crazy. I'm still running XP on my game machine, but I don't know of anyone who isn't at least at Celeron 266 even for a printserver.

G3258 is utilitarian for everything nowadays.

[clem24]

Speaking of technology...

http://mashable.com/2015/04/01/microsoft-ms-dos-app/

Fun for about 5 minutes if you have a Windows Phone. I guess MS still has a sense of humor LOL (i.e. running the internet app plays the sound of a 14.4 MODEM before it boots up). Ironically Android actually
has a working DOS emulator.

https://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/ms-dos-mobile/8573c4a8-b9df-4409-90a6-dad2dc0b6b26

Bonus points to who can find the 90s reference in the pic, assuming you can make it out LOL.

[ReasonOne]

I also had a talking Wang 386 lol man that sounds wrong...

If there was ever a problem (especially upon boot up) a synthesized woman's voice would tell you the error code with a one or two word explanation through a speaker on the mother board to aid in diagnosing issues.

Everybody I knew thought it was badass. I eventually turned it into a Linux security box on my home network.

I remember I used to supplement my income fixing computers around the neighbourhood as a kid. People would simply give me parts as partial payment, or would give me an old computer knowing I had an interest. Remember when you could make a genuine profit buying and selling old computers? Lol

[ReasonOne]

Wang!