Stone Age

Little embarrassing to say my digital life started back in 1994 with a … Pentium 60. No, no Commodore 64, no Atari™, not even an Amiga™ either.

Fig. 11 My very first computer: A Highscreen Pentium 60, 8 MB RAM, 520 MB HDD, running MS DOS™ 6.22 and Windows™ for Workgroups 3.11

Fig. 12 My first laptop: A Compaq 486 with an impressive docking station

Fig. 13 Just4fun I got an old IBM™ PS/2™ with 386 CPU

Fig. 14 IBM™ PS/2™ with 386 CPU

Stoneage Phase 1

I was late to the online game either, making my first steps in the BBS world around 1996. My first modem was an ELSA MicroLink 28.8 TQV, a top device at the time. With this I took my first online walks, at that time mainly in mailboxes, especially the “Blackbox”. Later I got my first internet access through a small provider called X-Point.

Fig. 15 My first links to the world: Elsa Microlink 28.8 TQV. No Internet yet, just the good old “Blackbox” BBS

Fig. 16 Back in the day when I used to be a system administrator …

Fig. 17 My very first dedicated server: Intel™ Xeon™ with 68 MB (!) of RAM

Fig. 18 My first desk as a system administrator at my former high school

Fig. 19 On the left: My first notebook

Fig. 20 My desk as a system administrator in the early 2000s

Getting online

Fig. 21 My big next step around the year 1999: A Pentium™ II: Alexander running Windows™ NT 4.0

Fig. 22 The setup was somewhat …

Fig. 23 … improvised.

Fig. 24 Alexander was subject to constant remodelling.

Fig. 25 In the early 2000s I started switching to Linux as my desktop OS …

Fig. 26 … running Gentoo

Fig. 27 Since back in the day computers used to be quite noisy and unpleasant in a living room I broke through the wall and funnelled the video and keyboard/mouse cables through the hole in the living room.

Fig. 28 Compaq™ iPaq™. A little ahead of its time I surely miss the high quality build and design.

Fig. 29 My second notebook: A cheap Gericom

'