My first one was a Timex-Sinclair. It had the same processor as the Trash 80. I bought a machine language book from Radio Shack, and it was totally compatible with my computer. I had that little $88 toy system playing various organ sounds by creating my own waveform tables and loading them into memory. I had the 16K memory pack that would wiggle and crash the computer. I could type about a page long program before filling the memory. I did the classic bubble sort.

My second computer was a Radio Shack Color Computer. It had the gray case, but it had a better keyboard than the original Chiclet keys. I then got the next Color Computer with the off-white case. I did a lot with that one. I had subscribed to "Rainbow" and "Hot CoCo" by then and was typing in some huge programs. The biggest was a weatherfax program that allowed me to connect the computer to the headphone jack of my shortwave receiver to receive and decode weather maps and satellite photos as well as a $10,000 machine. I also found that I could put a MIDI plug on one end of a serial printer cable and connect the computer to a Yamaha keyboard. I had software that I could copy sheet music note by note into and have it play the keyboard. Just playing the keyboard by hand, I could only use one sound at a time. Using the computer, I could use four instruments simultaneously. My first big piece of music was "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies."

I still have all the computers and all the magazines (20x24 home office that I can barely walk through).

You can still download DOS from Archive.org and run it on a modern computer. There are still people writing DOS software, including browsers that will work on the current internet. WordPerfect, the best word processing software ever created, has a DOS version that is still supported by a university. I can't remember who, but I think I have it saved somewhere. They even create printer drivers for newer printers. There is an old software called GoScript which will emulate a Postscript printer driver, allowing you to print some fancy stuff using an old HP DeskJet printer. I spent many hours back in the 1990s learning and doing stuff. I had a night job, so I got home after my wife was in bed. I'd have the wee hours all to myself to play.

I can still use DOS and still have disks for various versions. I used MS-DOS at first, but switched to DR-DOS for later versions.

Google it, and you can find all the old stuff to play with again.

I'm past 70, but I still learn new stuff and play on my computer. The phone company just this past week took away my copper DSL internet and put in fiber optic. Now my printers don't work. I'll fix it soon, but I wish I didn't have to. They should just work with whatever free wi-fi is available. There's only one, as I live away from people. It took me a while to get the wi-fi back to my office again. Copper was simpler, but the fiber is faster. And they say my phone bill will go down a bit.