[cr0sh]

> we knew hard drives existed, but they were so expensive that we didn't dare dream of them

I was from a slightly later generation (I think); I got my first machine in 1984. I knew hard drives existed too - a 10 meg system would only cost about $8000.00 back then that would connect to my machine (TRS-80 CoCo 2). Sigh.

As far as "multi-user" was concerned - well, we had OS-9 - if one could afford it (plus you needed a dual-floppy system if you didn't want to be swapping all the time). It could support multiple users, but it needed some special hardware for it.

As a kid, I later got a CoCo 3 (sometime around 1987 or so) - and I ended up building a null-modem cable to connect both of them, so I could "share" programs from the floppy drive on my CoCo 3 to my CoCo 2. I also experimented around with BBS coding using that setup. It was my first "network", so to speak.