…before we opened the floodgates on user-generated content.

You mean shitty user generated images and videos… there was user generated content before, but it wasn’t for self promotion. It was just “hey, I think this is cool, what you guys think of my project ☺️”… just people sharing ideas and other things.

Like I remember this very cool project someone did on their geocities page, a CD-ROM converted to a CD player. For the younger generation, CD-ROMs used to have an analogue audio out cable, so basically, when you play your audio CD in your CD-ROM, the signal went through the audio card’s CD_IN connector (yes, believe it or not, AUX wasn’t the only line level input on audio cards). Some CD-ROMs even had a play/next button and a stop button on the front pannel. So what this person actually did was program an MCU to generate the ATA commands that the PC would generate, so you can basically use your CD-ROM as a standalone CD player without it being hooked to a PC. Pretty cool if you ask me ☺️. Reuse old hardware, give it new life and meaning… well, at least for a while.