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We always hear that in DAoT, there was technology enabling humans to basically do everything. Some examples are named, e.g. the Men of Iron and Artificial Intelligence. Are there more examples of what was possible?
For the peak of other races, we also have examples. Necrons had the Celestial Orrery, Eldars were able to create their own gods using psionics and I've also heard there was a device that could fulfill ones wishes. What are humans highest technological achievements?
The main thing that was possible was the ability to create and make new STC's, develop new tech and ideas and investigate the limits of technological advancements. Humanity could develop and grow and the technology could alongside them, innovation was encouraged and so new designs where being created all the time. IN addition Warp travel was discovered and travel to other planets in distant systems was achieved.
In the "Modern era" there are no newly created STC's there are no new technologies or developments, all there is are the rediscovery of technologies that have been lost, and many of these are misunderstood, the tech priests know they work, but not the how, or the why. The Adeptus mechanicus is prohibited from carrying out true development and innovation. Humanity has stagnated, or it could be argued is sinking backwards as technologies are slowly being lost.
If you take the example of the Imperial Knight. In the Dark age of technology the components that made it up would be intricately known and the way they worked would be fully understood. Therefore if one broke, needed maintenance, or was going to be upgraded or improved, it could be made as good as new on any forgeworld, and if it couldn't immediately factories could be built to allow it to be.
In the "modern era" alot of the technologies has become myth, the tech priests understand that you need to to certain things to activate and use it, but they don't understand the how or the why. They know that if this part breaks it can be replaced, but being able to build a new knight from scratch, or conceive of how the process would begin, without the correct STC template would be beyond anyone. The Modern knight vs the DAoT knight may not be technologically different, but, it would be better maintained, better understood and may, have better weapons who's STC has been lost to the ravages of time.
However in answer to your question, what was possible, "anything that an engineer could think of". Institutions wouldn't stop an idea from being created (hence Abominable Intelligence etc), whole worlds lived in Virtual Reality, Planets where terraformed and made livable in a way the imperium cant achieve now. But the main thing is that technology advanced and developed.
A Standard Template Construct (STC) system was an advanced, artificially intelligent computer database created during the Dark Age of Technology said to have contained the sum total of human scientific and technological knowledge.
The STC was invented when human interstellar civilisation was at its technological peak. Introduced during the Dark Age of Technology before the onset of the Age of Strife, an STC allowed workers to build anything from a Lasgun to a fortified bunker or the fearsome interstellar warships now used by the Imperial Navy. STC systems possessed the ability not just to store information but also to produce new designs to meet changing circumstances.
They're the pretty much the most sought after items in the 40k universe, from a technology standpoint anyway. They contain the blueprints to all sorts of incredible things mankind created but can't remember how to build anymore. Imperial Knights for example.
There are a few examples of devices used by Men of Iron (an autonomous AI that rebelled some time during the DAOT) that you can find: apparently they had spaceships the size of Saturn rings, that were able to snuff-out stars in a way similar to the Starkiller base from Star Wars. They were also using giant constructs called Mechnivore that were able to chew whole continents, like the Galactus from Marvel.
