A modem in spring 1994 led to the FidoNet world, and by late 1995 I was running my own BBS node. Through the mid-90s I collected old and new machines enthusiastically, building up a collection that lasted until 2005 when most of it was sold off. By 2000, the FidoNet hobby had quietly faded.
+After the FidoNet era wound down, the focus shifted to Linux. A home network grew in Augsburg with a Smoothwall firewall, a Red Hat server, a Postfix/Apache mail and web server, and a multimedia workstation, all connected over 10 Mbit thin-Ethernet and a demand-dial RAS connection. A FreeBSD server ran Apache, Sendmail and Perl scripts alongside a Windows NT 4.0 file server. Microsoft certifications in Windows NT 4.0 and IIS 4.0 followed in 2000, and the work at IXOS SOFTWARE AG as a Web Engineer rounded out the professional side. The retro hobby took a back seat during this period, but the collection of old machines was still growing quietly in the background until 2005. The location, network and projects pages of the timecapsule have the full story.
+The collection shrank down to what I actually used daily: a 2009 iMac, a 2010 iPad 1, and eventually a Chromebook for everyday tasks in 2017. The iPad 1 is practically a museum piece by now, and the Chromebook has become the machine I reach for when I just want something that works.