I suspect that we're about the same age.

Man, com ports and IRQs: I had 14 functional RS-232 ports on one machine, once, between the BocaBoard (with 10P10C jacks), the STB serial card that 3dfx promised to never erase documentation for (it is erased -- *thanks, nVidia*), and the couple of serial ports that were built into a motherboard or multi-IO card at that time.

Once configured to be actually-working, which I did mostly as a dare to myself, I could find no combination of connected serialized stuff that would upset it.

And that was fun having a ridiculous amount of serial ports: I had dumb terminals scattered around, and I had machines connected with SLIP and PLIP. (Ethernet seemed expensive, and "spare laptops" or "closet laptops" were not at all a thing yet.)

Anyhow, piracy: My friends and I were mostly into PSX back then. I may or may not have installed a dozen mod chips for my friends so I could get a discount on my own mod chip. (I was not trying to make money.)

Aaand there may have been quite a lot of piracy. I remember coming home and checking the mailbox to find a copy of Gran Turismo 2, with a hand-written note from a friend who I didn't expect to be able to succeed in duping a disc with Nero, but he'd done it, and hand-delivered it, and it worked. I subsequently played the fuck out of that game.

But you've clearly got a different perspective. And that's interesting to me.

> Even years later I was annoyed that the CDI version of Skies of Arcadia (Echelon, maybe?) didn't support the VGA box.

I've never actually-played a CDI system (I do recall poking at them in retail displays), and I don't know what "the VGA box" is in this context. Can you elaborate?