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>I can actually top that. My first personal computer was an original IBM PC with a memory upgrade to all of 256K..And that was all you needed back then. WordStar. dBASE, Lotus, a color monitor. 4500 bucks through a connection at IBM. It was revolutionary to have that kind of power at your command.
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>Present at the creation,
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The period between 1987 and 1989 for me was one of pure explosion. I started with an XT that ran 20 MHz, 640K of memory, and a 20 mb hard disk. (By 1989 had a 386). Turbo C and FoxPro 1 will always be the most significant software releases of my life. My first new car was a black Fiero with a license plate of TurboC

In 1989 I was 24 years old and made 47K, partly as an employee and partly as a contractor. (Spent most of the money on beer and girls, haha). I felt like I was having a Roger Maris type year. I was using FoxPro 1 in late 1989 for some work in the WIC program, and did a demo for USDA in Atlanta in December of that year. Some of the hardcore mainframe people couldn't believe that a PC database like Fox could run that fast. The Fox made many a whiz kid out of us. Good times.

It's hard to recreate that magic. Doesn't matter how much fun I might be having these days, it'll never compare to those early years.