Ok. Guess it’s time to date myself. My first IT job was on a 4381 mainframe. I still have a stack of 80-column cards in the back bedroom. I use them for bookmarks now. They have become handy conversation starters, especially in the computer classes I am taking. When we shut the old workplace down, I managed to snag the small SCSI 9-track tape drive that we were using to sneaker-net our EDI data from the PC over to the mainframe and back. Also a great conversation starter.
My first (personal) computer was the Osborne. I was an absolute wizard with that 5 inch CRT and 2 90k floppies. I built the RS232 interface to tie it to a Royal electronic typewriter. I was USAF back then (late 70s-early 80s) and the first admin weenie to put a computer on a squadron desktop. Those were magical days. When I wore that system out, my “upgrade” was to a Radio Shack Model 3. That DW-II printer was the fastest thing anyone had ever seen.
Nowadays, I carry 2 laptops along with my books to class. I have Windows on one and the other is usually running the flavor of the day of Linux distros. Being a prudent fellow, the wife’s laptop is the newest — Daddy gets the hand-me-downs. When I’m not taking classes, I work in the university IT shop now and am learning to love virtualization.