>>>>Can't wait for monochrome, light grey on black, and ASCII graphics and "pick-a-number menus" to become trendy again...
>>
>>Ha. My first machine was a TRS-80 Level II. Monochrome upper case text only (Tandy saved a few pennies that way) and graphics 128*48, actually contrived via ascii characters with 6 blocks per character on the 64*16 screen. Still have it. That thing had a ROM OS and booted in about a second. Even the floppy disk OS loaded off disk in about 4 seconds.
>
>For a numerical methods class in school we had a choice: the prof could give us vouchers for the campus MTS (line up to use it), or buy our own programmable calculators. I went the HP-29C route.
>
>My first "real" system was a BBI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_Big_Board

Seem you're older than me or your dad was richer than mine... :)

My first computer was a 8MHZ %100 IBM compatible (remember,%100 IBM compatible was a proud reason for manufacturer) 8086 with 10MB HDD and 256kb ram when I was working as a programmer after university.