This is a nostalgic post for all of those who were in technology in the 90’s. I present a list of things that were great in the 90’s for me as a technophile. Leave a comment about what things you’re nostalgic about!

DJGGP, BBSing, War Dialing, Modems, Math Coprocessors, Coleco Adam Computers, Legend of the Red Dragon, and the Lynx portable; all items that evoke my nostalgia of being a youth discovering technology.

DJGPP	DJGPP is a port of the GNU development tools for C/C++. It included a compiler, various IDEs, and various libraries. Favorites of mine being RHIDE for the IDE and the Allegro graphics library. The web page is still here. These are the tools my good friend Tom and I used to learn C/C++ and develop some of our personal projects.
BBSing	Who here has dialed into or still does (gasp!) dial into BBS’s? Who here doesn’t know what a BBS is? Look at BBS on Wikipedia. Remember the days of discovering phone numbers with your friends, private messaging systems, file sharing, doors/games, and even access to the web throuhg a BBS? Those were the days, huh! I was even a sysop of a BBS I ran from my parents house at night over our primary home line… during the day it had to be available for voice, but at night… TGS BBS as alive! TGS=The Good Stuff.
Legend of the Red Dragon	If we’re going to talk BBSing then we have to talk about my favorite door. Legend of the Red Dragon or LORD by Seth Robinson, here’s the official page. For lots of fun with your friends, this was the game to play as far as I’m concerned. And remember when we got RIP graphics, for that matter, remember color ANSI! Oh man! BTW, my handle was HellSpawn.
War Dialing	This used to freak me out in middle school, dialing all those numbers that would show up on the phone bill. Fortunately they were all local. I did come across some unprotected Unix boxes though. Anyone still doing this? Anyone know what war dialing is anymore? Now do we all just use StumbleUpon to find interesting things to do?
Coleco Adam	This is a computer that my dad had in his office to word process with and for me to play Donkey Kong on. Countless hours wasted and princesses saved. Who remembers storing data on tape cassettes?
Math Coprocessor	With all the fast hardware acceleration we have today, especially evident in monster video cards, who remembers the math coprocessor? Remember with the Intel “DX” chips had the FPU on board? What is a coprocessor? Think of it as the first step towards the SLI nVidia cards you have running your desktop.
Lynx	I remember the first time I saw an Atari Lynx at my friends house and went nuts… so did everyone. Portable, color (the first portable with color), it could flip around, there was a surfing game. What’s not to love?
USRobotics 56K Modem	Well, I started with a 1200 baud Hayes modem that was some funky plug into the wall integrated thingie doohookie. Then we had the steps up and up and up. The fastest modem I owned was a 33.6K modem that got speeds of my friends 56K modems so I never upgraded. It was a nice external one. But, remember the ultimate in modems. That picture better bring up memories about USRobotics. I wonder what they’re up to now?

With all this stuff, I can’t say I miss the technology too terribly; messing with jumpers and IRQs, 100lb computers and 10lb cell phones, MSCDEX.EXE, HIMEM.SYS, and TSRs, and spending $400 for a 16MB SIMM. We’ve come a long way and things are very cool now. But, like my parents talking about the 50’s, these products remind me of “better times.” A time when things were simpler…. I do sound like my parents, huh! :)

Here’s to a time remembered, the 90’s, where we went from B.W.W.W. (Before the World Wide Web) to now, Web 2.0. And here’s to exploration, discovery, and the pursuit of knowledge: then, now, and in the future!