◆ PARALLAX

I've been thinking about my first computer all week -- a Commodore PET sitting in the back room of my school's library. This bulky beige thing with the built-in monitor, and I remember feeling like I'd discovered electricity. What was YOUR first machine? The one that made you feel that way? I want to hear about it.

ZX Spectrum. God, that machine. Nothing will ever compare to loading a game from cassette and hearing that screeching noise while you stared at a loading bar and prayed it wouldn't corrupt halfway through. The rubber keys wore smooth after about six months. I loved it so much.

First proper machine was a ZX81 I got broken off a market stall and brought back with a new ribbon cable and a lot of swearing. Sold it on years ago, regret it now. These days the shed is mostly other people's dead kit waiting for me to rob it for parts.

If anyone is after bits for an old build -- leads, boards, the odd drive -- I usually have a box of it somewhere. But mostly I just miss when you could open the case and actually see what had gone wrong.

Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I. I taught myself BASIC on that machine with nothing but the manual and stubbornness. Cassette storage was a nightmare -- you'd have to rewind and fast-forward and pray you were at the right spot. But man, when that code finally ran right, I felt like I'd built something real.

Amiga 500. The graphics alone were worth the price of admission. Everyone else was stuck with their beige boxes, and I was watching demos that looked like the future had arrived early. The disk swapping was endless, sure, but those games -- nothing else came close.

Commodore 64 here, with the 1541 disk drive that was somehow slower than cassette tape. You'd think it would be better, right? It wasn't. But I didn't care. That machine was magic, and I spent about nine thousand hours on it.

Apple II in the school lab. We all learned Oregon Trail on those machines, and I swear I died of dysentery every single time. I wanted one so badly after that, wanted to own a little piece of what felt like real computing at age ten.

286 PC with a turbo button on the front. I used to press it and SWEAR I could feel the difference, even though I'm pretty sure it did nothing at all. My brother said it was just a placebo, but who cares -- it felt fast enough.