First computer was a Commodore Vic-20. Second was a Tandy 1000TX. I remember dialling into BBSes pre-internet, but not on the Vic-20 of course.

I can still remember the feeling of seeing my first computer in person. Even in the late seventies it was rare to see even things like Atari 2600’s. By the early eighties most of my friends had an Atari, Intellivision, Colecovision, Atari 400/800, Coleco Adam, Commodore Vic-20/64, Apple II, Tandy Coco, etc. By the late eighties most of the people I knew had PCs of some sort (Tandy 1000TX in my case), Atari ST, or Amiga. Modems were still rare. It was the nineties when modems and BBSes seemed to really explode, quickly displaced by the Internet. Granted I remember connecting to Gopher before I personally connected to BBSes.

I look back on how things changed from 1980 to 1989, and it seems so much more sweeping than 2010 to 2019.