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17 days agoI remember it as far back as the 90’s. Usually referred to things like SCSI dongles that authorized the use of expensive software like Maya (which was ~$50k at the time), because online DRM activation wasn’t really a thing yet. Probably goes back further than that.
Lol, tell me about it.
And the serial dongle sounds much more sensible than requiring what amounted to a SCSI terminator, of which you could typically only have one. Need to use other software with a SCSI dongle? Shut down your machine, swap them out, and start it up again, 'cause SCSI don’t like that hot swapping.