Step 1 - Atari PC with a plastic "soft" keyboard overlay. Step 2 - Radio Shack Color Computer (COCO) with a blinding 8 bit speed. BBS access with a 56k modem telephone. I loved all the old games (some with no graphics). Saving and loading programs was done on a cassette tape recorder. Then came the "advanced" soft floppy disks with a clunky so-called hard drive controller. Step 3 - RS 286 and learning RS DOS and basic programming. Step 4 - upgrade to a 486 machine, 60 mb internal HD(wow!). The biggest thrill then was MS DOS, learning it from scratch, writing your own menus and a sort of operating system for your own machine. Leisure Suit Larry, how I miss you. Todays "Instant Messaging" was begun way back in the beginning with the BBS access, just type away and switch your modem, send/recieve. You could even have a mailbox, no spam, no viruses, no advertising. Along came Bill Gates with his Windows, hello commercialism, say good bye to the good old days. Wish I kept my COCO 3 and all the floppy disk games. Oh yeah, most were pirated (early warez don't ya know)... Thanks for the memories...NiteOwl