I too had an 8 gallon enameled canning pot for my first all grain setup.
“Zapap” latter tun from Papazian. Basically a five gallon bucket, with a bunch of holes drilled in the bottom, set inside the bottling bucket.
Corona grain mill which could easily turn your grain to flour if you weren’t careful.
I remember buying a set of “Listermann” counterflow chiller fittings and making my first counterflow chiller with copper and a garden hose.
Anyone remember listermann whirly gig sparge arm?
Right. It’s the “propagator” pack I was thinking of. Something like 15 billion cells per pack.
My wife bought me a homebrewing set up in 1990 for my birthday. Basically a couple of plastic fermenters and a kit. Kit made a lager, a can of liquid malt extract, a couple of pounds of dry malt extract, a couple ounces of Hallertauer hops, and “Red Star Lager Yeast”. It actually came out pretty good.
I live in Montana, and the first place where I bought supplies was a mail order business near Bozeman. Pre-internet days. The internet certainly led to an explosion in available brewing knowledge. I recall finding the Homebrew Digest in the late 1990s, followed by Brews and Views shortly thereafter. Those were great times.
Yes, I think I still have it. I may still have the Phil’s Phalse Bottom for a mash bucket as well. It was one step up from the Zapap.
I still have the sparge arm and the Phil’s Phalse Bottom as well. They’re on display in my Homebrew Junk museum. 
I used both in the early days. To be honest, I prefer the polycarbonate Phil’s Phalse botton over a perforated stainless false bottom. The sparge arm was little more of an engineering gimmick. Continuous sparging at this level is trivial. We do not need to sprinkle our lauter tuns.
They had a podcast about it and sent out an email. Something about homebrew supply moving towards other aspects of beer business, the homebrew side was a small part of the business.
Went on a club trip a few years ago and stopped at the Blue Cat brew pub, which was supposed to be the oldest brew pub in Illinois. Tasted like they still brewed using brown bricks of hops and dusty extract.
I have a similar museum.
Started homebrewing in 1979. We bought a house ( $38,000.00 ), and it took everything we had to pay the mortgage. Saw a can of malt extract in a grocery store and bought it. Canada Brew. Corn sugar plus city water and a 5 gallon glass carboy. Yeast was like 5 grams under the cap. I drank it though, kind of forgot how it tasted. I do remember in the summer the temp must of been close to 80 F. Bought Charlie’s book in the early 80’s and started partial mash brewing on the stove. Loved it. Built his Zapzap with a couple of buckets and was well on my way to brewing all grain. I still couldn’t find a big enough pot to boil a 5 gallon batch, so using corn sugar was still in my recipes. Did kits until the late 90’s until I bought a 13 gallon keg to use as a boiler. Still have it, it is my sparge tank now converted to electric. Those were the days. I was always on the look out for brewing equipment as Canada had pretty well nothing to offer in homebrew equipment so we had to make our own stuff. Ordering equipment from the US was way cheaper than it is now though. I still have my Zapzap bucket along with a mash jacket I ordered from the US. I also still have all of my brewing books I bought back in the day. One thing though, I gathered all of my old Brew Your Own magazines in a box, I think there were around 100 and put them on our local marketplace on facebbook. For free!!! Not one taker, I guess the new brewers know it all.
I hoard magazines. I have all the BYO/Zymurgy/Wood Mag/American Woodworker/Handyman Club of America I’ve ever received. I even found a box of The Iowan the other day. It was a beautiful coffee table type of magazine. I think I have a problem. 
The woodworking mags publish the same set of articles every 3-4 years for the most part. Subscribe for 4 years and you have every plan they’ve got.
My son is now raiding my old brewing gear to get started making cider and mead. A new generation of us is beginning.
Paul
I have magazines going way back, too. I just put them in plastic cases and never pull them out. I guess I am thinking that when I retire, I will re-live the earlier days or something. I think I may start to give away the old and excess equipment, if there are guys in my homebrew club that might want the stuff or perhaps my son (he brews about twice a year with a buddy of his). Time to de-clutter according to my wife.
“email news group that came out from the BA or whatever it was called before the forums that was interesting but really hard to follow (I can’t remember what it was called now, someone will remember)”
was it alt.rec.hombrewing?
alt.beer.homebrewing was one, and rec.crafts.brewing was another. I frequented both for a few years.
I spent quite a bit time in those news groups too. They were great resources but a real pain to use compared to today’s tech.
Paul
I first started brewing around '82 or so. Extract of course. We steeped a few grains and we thought that was pretty advanced. No temp control… actually, an old unfinished, concrete floored bathroom that we deemed stayed pretty stable temp-wise was it. Our beer was never that great, always tasted… off. Had that “homebrew” taste to it. In 2016 I decided I wanted to brew again, but fix all the issues we had.
So much more info out there as compared to the '80s… being the Bay Area we had a couple of different places we could get supplies from back then.