Similar experience here. My childhood friend bought a second-hand Atari 800XL, because it had cartridge games, and I begged him to borrow it for a week because

Similar experience here. My childhood friend bought a second-hand Atari 800XL, because it had cartridge games, and I begged him to borrow it for a week because I saw it accepted programs. Bought a cheap book called "Fred Aprende Informática" (Fred learns informatics) and had the best week of my life figuring BASIC out. It was painful to give it back, but that motivated me to save and buy one of my own. Ironically, old computers/consoles were cheap then, I got most of them at bazaars for peanuts. If I knew mass-produced vintage hardware would become so expensive, I would have saved most of them. I can't imagine the same phenomenon with today's computers/consoles, everything is expensive and frail.