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The drive that made every PC a record-pressing plant. You fed in a blank CD-R, dragged your downloads into Nero or Easy CD Creator, and held your breath: one buffer underrun mid-burn and the disc was a coaster. When it worked, you walked away with a fresh mix CD and the quiet pride of having pressed it yourself.
Before Google Images, decorating a book report meant clip art: flipping through a phone-book-thick catalog of tiny thumbnails, finding the picture you wanted by number, digging out the right CD-ROM, and printing it one image at a time. Every 90s birthday flyer and school newsletter was built from these libraries.
The weekly pilgrimage down the hall to the room full of beige Apple computers, where you'd slot in a floppy disk, wait, and take turns dying of dysentery on the Oregon Trail. "Computer Day" was equal parts educational software and the first place a lot of kids ever touched a keyboard.