I blew up my C64 poking at the chips on the board inside, a spark one day and it died. It booted up fine and showed the READY prompt but the cursor block never

I blew up my C64 poking at the chips on the board inside, a spark one day and it died. It booted up fine and showed the READY prompt but the cursor block never appeared and it froze before it could accept keyboard input. I then got a second-hand Amstrad CPC464, but this time I got a manual (I didn't get a manual with the C64, it was a gift from a family friend) and a non-functional tape drive, which, unlike the C64, was integrated. It also came with a monochrome monitor! Every program I wrote I had to erase before I could write a new one. I wrote an alarm-clock program which made an air-raid siren noise that woke me up every morning, and I had to rewrite it again every night. The BBC project was hugely worthwhile, IMO. It had side-effects in Ireland, I had a couple of friends with BBC computers, and of course there were all those Usborne books, though Vic-20, TRS-80 and friends (before my time) probably helped too.