[cdkmoose]

This story really hits home. I started a little earlier but rural Maine was just as isolated. My first computer at home was a TRS-80 Model 1 we got in 1979. It had a cassette deck for storing programs. I spent many hours hand entering game and utility source code from Byte magazine.

I got my first IBM compatible while in college around 1985, 640 K and DUAL floppies. It was from a startup PC maker named PCs Limited, started by a college drop out named Michael Dell. Two floppy disks provided infinite opportunities. A 300 baud modem connected me to the campus mainframe.

Years later for work I remember having a 28.8K (then 56K) modem to connect to work on nights and weekends to do support work and access the companies T-1 line.

Strangely enough, by the time cable was run to my parents home in that rural Maine town it was more cost effective to run fiber than copper, so my parents got fiber to the house.