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It's funny that this was my first thought, too. I am sure game console browsers were an entry point for whole generations of kids.

Mine WOULD have been through the Dreamcast, but because my parents were early adopters of Broadband internet, we never had a dial-up connection to hook the modem up to.

I did a bit of curious searching on the family PC, but one time I forgot to wipe the history, and the game was up. The first thing with a web browser that was "mine" was the PSP in high school, and I even had a special second memory card (512MB) that I would save things to that I'd take it out and hide it in a crevice in my bedframe when I was done.

by luma7 hours ago|

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Later in its life, the Dreamcast release the "broadband adapter", a 100mbit Ethernet replacement for the modem. Worked great, but very limited support in games. That plus a DC keyboard and mouse made me BRUTAL in quake 3... until someone worked out how to join DC games from the PC.

by Uncle_Brumpus5 hours ago|

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I actually had to go check to make sure the DC did originally have a modem before posting. I've been dabbling in Dreamcast modding the last couple of years, and the only network adapter that came to mind was the broadband one which, colored my childhood memories a bit. I remember there being a very specific reason we couldn't get the DC online, and "not having a long enough ethernet cable" definitely wasn't it.

by taneq7 hours ago|

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> I did a bit of curious searching on the family PC, but one time I forgot to wipe the history, and the game was up.

Hahaha that takes me back to the time my friend got hold of a 3.5” floppy with some Playboy pics on it, and then called me in a panic because Windows had helpfully added them to the “recent files” list and he couldn’t figure out how to clear it.

by alhadrad7 hours ago|

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I would like to understand the pedigree of those images. Someone had to go through an awful LOT of trouble to save them to a floppy... This leaves a lot of open questions. Scanners at the time were technological torture apparatus.

by Uncle_Brumpus4 hours ago|

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This is only tangentially related to early high-quality materials, but since I'm already strolling down memory lane: My dad used to work as an after-hours maintenance tech at a graphic imaging company. For several years my mom worked days and my dad worked nights. Occasionally, my brother and I would get to go to work with either parent to give the other a break from watching us every day.

Going to work with dad was fun. Somehow he determined we wouldn't be able to do any harm, and let us sit at some of the editing stations (Macintosh Quadras of some type, iirc) and mess around in Photoshop (I think version 5.0 or 6.0?). Of course we got to digging through the files. One of them had a couple folders of some pin-up photoshoots. Incredibly high-resolution scans displayed proudly on a 20" Applevision CRT rivaling the size of our home television. Photos that would have taken an hour to download over the web if you could even find a place hosting them. We were too young to really appreciate it, but thinking back, that's an experience I'd be willing to bet none of my peers had.

There was also a folder of promotional monster truck material and some photoshoots from car shows. We were definitely more interested in those.

Sitting in that warm cramped room surrounded by 8 workstations with TENS of gigabytes of spinning rust will forever be a core memory. I miss the old HDD sound.

by alhadrad23 minutes ago|

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Excellent bit of oral history, thanks!

by thorin6 hours ago|

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I seem to remember some pirate copies of art packages (maybe Photon paint) on the Amiga coming with a similar set of images that would be of interest to some teenagers...