The computers I built back in the 1980s were always a Frankenstein’s monster of whatever my dad and grandpa handed down to me. I didn’t have enough money then to buy anything myself. So I had to make it work, whatever it was.

Compy stuff was 10x as expensive then as it is now, for reference.

I was incredibly grateful for anything they gave me at all. Back in those days, they could’ve just as easily sold it for fairly high prices.

So I accepted with thanks whatever they wanted to donate to me and got it to run. I was really freakin’ proud of my little 286 I built from parts all by myself when I was 10. It was slow, it could barely dial into a BBS even at 2400 baud without crashing, and it took an eternity to launch anything, but it was mine.