I remember begging my parents to take me to a Radio Shack to get one of these when I was in second grade. The idea of being able to scan various items around the house was such a wild concept to me for some reason. Once we finally tracked one down, I scanned every book on my shelf into a trial copy of Winnebago Spectrum that I had obtained. It was the software suite that my elementary school's library ran off of, and I installed it on a Windows 2000 PC that my dad had passed down to me after upgrading the office computer. God knows how many hours I spent playing library with my younger sister and aimlessly scanning ISBNs - such simple times! Surprisingly I still have that same PS/2 CueCat in my drawer, though it hasn't been plugged in for at least fifteen years.I know many of us in this community tend to look back at the earlier days of the internet very fondly and feel the nostalgia hit strongly, and I think it's because of the innovations (or maybe gimmicks?) like these that were novel and groundbreaking in many ways. Off the top of my head right now, I can't recall anything in recent times as quirky as the CueCat that would have evoked a similar excitement and genuine intrigue to a child today like I was fortunate to have experienced twenty years ago. But then again, I'm sure back then there weren't many seven year olds hunting down library database software and messing around with it for fun - so maybe my perspective is an outlier...
kotaKat|2 years ago
I just checked and oh boy, I could spin it back up... https://www.mlasolutions.com/products/m3