it was the 80s,
the 1980s
Transend was my BB connection to my contacts that produced a Bromide plate I could give to my printer guy which in turn made it possible for him to produce posters & stiff.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...FYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=transend modems&f=false
Had to connect the phone to the coupler and the Transend software did the rest. I remember one day I could not get anything to work and the guy on the phone, we had two lines, fixed it remotely, I kid you not. In them days it was a wee bit new and very futureistic.
My printer guy talked me into buying a 300dpi laser printer, I saved an absolute shed load of money as he could produce the same results from a paper print out.
The PC was a state-of-the-art Wearns 286, 256k ram, which had a 386 daughter-board fitted. Was as slow as a pig to load as it needed more ram. That PC was on lone as a demo, the UK distributor went bust and I had a 3k system for free.
It didn't take too long for the 'coupler' to be replaced with the new fangled external modem.
I used Windows 3.1, Adobe Pagemaker, Corel Draw 3? ... an Amstrad PCW that Nettie used to transcribe student dissertations and other text, with a simple accounts package, and I also had the software/hardware
(a cable) to allow me to copy the files from the Amstrad PCW
My "company" was called Designs-inPrint ... lasted all of 3 years.