I got started fixing Commodore 64s for a friend who had a repair contract with a local school system. My first computer was a 286 machine, 8MHz, no wait states

I got started fixing Commodore 64s for a friend who had a repair contract with a local school system. My first computer was a 286 machine, 8MHz, no wait states (as fast as a normal 10 Mhz machine!) with 40 megabytes of hard drive, and a super hi resolution monitor (640x480!) I reprogrammed the CRT controller chip to add an extra display line. On that line I displayed caps/scroll lock status, and the time, etc. Borland Sidekick was a Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) program that did a ton of cool things, including a text editing. That came in quite handy in the days of MS-DOS. I was introduced to Turbo Pascal (3.0) as a means of controlling an EPROM burner. I didn't like it first, but grew to love it in short order. Pascal is still my favorite programming language. Multilink allowed you to use a single machine for multiple users. We'd have a Wyse terminal hooked up to a serial port supporting a second user. (Back when computers were $2000+, it made sense) The best part was shareware... you could get a disk full of programs to try out for $3. There were quite a few good ones in the mix. Now we're so terrified of malware we don't even want to visit the wrong web site.