Wow, what a blast from the past. I was only 9 at the time this was released and every bit enamored with the world of computers. My dad owned a data recovery business that also developed software. I was home-schooled and would visit his office frequently after class as I loved looking at all the hard drives and also loved the "computer room smell". There was also the office tradition of playing a game of Bungie's Marathon (which ran natively on Mac OS 9) before closing up shop. It wasn't too long after I would be saving up for my first tangerine iBook.
Reminds me of a fake MacOS website that we naughty students used to load up on IE on Windows machines at school and then full screen it, which would make it look like it was converted to a Mac.
Except it was just a webpage designed to look like a Mac with some very basic GUI features.
It was an extremely popular prank, I just can't remember the name of the website now.
the smell being dust, or ozone? Working in a computer repair place when i was ~19 ruined my sinuses forever. I have a lot of old hardware kind of sorted in cabinets, and whenever someone needs some old hardware i have to either dust mask or take an antihistamine.
So asking me for something to fix a broken old thing usually involves me making a cross face, handing you whatever it is, and then taking a nap after washing my hands twice.
I'm not exactly sure the origin of the smell. Perhaps its the silicon/plastic they use on the electronics? Maybe even the heat combined with all the rest of the components produces that unique smell that I love so much.
Good times.