I had one mission and that was to clone the hard drive so that I could get all the stuff off of it before time had its way with the bits
Pff, hard drive? In my day, everything we ever coded was stored on cassette tapes. We never needed the computer itself to get them back, just a tape player, special software [1], and the good fortune that solar flares hadn't eaten all the bits yet.
The only real fight I ever recall my parents having was when my dad came home with that $1,000 100 meg hard drive. My mother was livid that he had not discussed it with her first. Years later, as I came to learn what our financial situation was like in those days, I understood just how crazy it was for him to do.
One of my earliest childhood memories was going to the computer store with my mom to buy my dad an Imagewriter II as a gift. I LOVED that thing and it is probably responsible for much of my love of computing. (I remember the day my dad taught me what PR#6 did… oh boy the paper I wasted after that.)
It was only over a decade later that I realized how crazy it was that she bought that for him, given that it was (a) $600, and (b) she knew absolutely nothing about computers.
Pff, hard drive? In my day, everything we ever coded was stored on cassette tapes. We never needed the computer itself to get them back, just a tape player, special software [1], and the good fortune that solar flares hadn't eaten all the bits yet.
[1] http://pokeystuff.com/cs1er/