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>There's an unspoken dogma that without a $1000 phone and pricey Mac, you can't be a creator.

You just made me realize an interesting cultural shift. I distinctly recall how an old 386 or 486 wasn't good enough to run the cool games anymore. But it was good enough for QBASIC and turbo pascal. So I spent time tinkering on that system.

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I could create on my 486, but since it didn't have a math co-processor I could only create a Doom level, I couldn't build them. I spent hours blindly building and checking it over and hoping that when I put it on a floppy and took it to my friend's house that all the doors would work, the elevations were correct, etc. Good times.

Doom did not require a maths co-processor. It ran just fine on my 486SX-33. Perhaps you're thinking of Quake?

No, I never made Quake levels. Mine was an SX-20 and it played ok, but building a level complained about a math co-processor. I tried an emulator once, let it build all night and it still wasn't done.

Salvation came through Wal-Mart of all places and I convinced my mom that this $20(or $40, maybe I was paying half?) chip would just drop in that empty socket and double the speed of our computer. 486DX-40, that was nice...

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