20 years ago nearly all universities could afford more than a single Unix box for all the undergraduates to share. At that point it was mainstream to buy a cheap US$300 ATX box and run Linux on it, so you could have one per student or one per dozen students, rather than one for the whole undergraduate student body.
The Rio Receiver came out 21 years ago. That was a Linux box sold as a consumer electronics stereo component; it grabbed MP3s over Ethernet to play them. I don't remember how much it cost but it was less than US$300.
But apparently the original author tried using asan? That seems like an inconsistency in the story.
