Wayne- Neat reading of your early ventures. Those Xerox scanners were the hot thing and helped launched virtual porn LOL!
Starting in 1978 I played with a Tandy and tape cassette. Next came the IBM PC Jr. In 1989 I thought it was cool to have a Toshiba T1000 laptop running a bootable drive with DOS 2.1. It was given to me as a gift by a Toshiba rep after I sold him a new BMW. I used it as a database contact manager and was an early user among car sales reps. Amazing to think that was a 10 year time span.
Then around 1989 / 90 (not exactly sure) I dealt with a co-founder of Netscape just before the big time and launch. That fellow was so excited, I couldn't quite grasp his lingo of what he was talking about. He traded in an 1984 MB 190E grey market car that still had the required German halon fire extinquisher (which I now have installed in my 1984 911
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In the later 1990's I created a few websites. A specific one was geared to the specialty OEM vehicle market. While having a small warehouse and the rest dropped shipped it was obvious to see where the future was. Unfortunately for me, everything went sour after a partner screwed me out of everything I built. After that I needed a sabatical and went into the building trades.
Looking back, the learning, time and expense was insane compared to today. Nowadays, one could purchase a decent enough laptop for $300, own a domain for next to nothing, build a basic site in an evening, have a zero cost hosting and be in business collecting funds. Thats remarkable.
Cheers, Scott