AVB,

I remember all of those!!!

I got my first job in 1986 at a Soviet electronic plant making chips (mostly for military) and got fascinated by an idea to have my own computer... i found a schematics for an 8080 based computer, i procured all the parts, except for the main processor chip itself (our plant did not make the processors) and... and then i was drafted into the Soviet military in 1988... long story short - after coming to the US in the 1991, I was still hoping to built a computer, but the times were hard, i needed to learn English, get myself integrated (lucky me, I was over 21 at the time and I was NOT precluded to buy my own booze... crazy law!!!)...
Amazingly, I did not have to built a computer, as I could just buy it... can you imagine that?!! I got my first comp in 1992, and read in the russian newspaper that there is "bitnet/eunet/internet" that was invented in the US and people could communicate with each other through computers for free... a phone call back to former soviet union would cost $2.49 first minute and $2.24 each additional with 3 minutes minimum...

To my surprise, nobody knew about this "american" invention and i thought it was made up story in russian press when one dude handed me a 3.5" floppy with AOL... my computer had GeoWorks (alternative to Windows) and the AOL would not load... besides, my comp did not even have a hard drive - it had two floppies... aol would give you 5 hours a month for the monthly fee... a local college offered me internet for $300 a month!!!

good ol'days!!!

it is amazing how far the technology has come - my new android cell phone is hundreds of times more powerful than what i had back then...

gee... i remember all of that... i am old!!!!