That's not how those worked.
This comment clearly shows you were 42 in 1998.
Not quite. I was an electronics tech with an interest in modern electronics, and had something similar to that. A soft-switched ministack would probably go into a reset mode when power was applied, just so it didn't start automatically playing something.
Interesting.
What year do you think technology peaked in?
That's a difficult question to answer. Some aspects of technology haven't yet peaked or are developing at fantastic pace, others quit long ago.
I will say that if I had to go back to a time period, I'd probably pick the early 1980s. There was still enough leftover from the vacuum era that it would be a cornucopia of devices to play with, but electronics was still discrete enough that a project didn't start with "Acquire an Arduino and load this sketch..."
The only thing I'd really miss would be the powerful single-board computers of today.
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