We were an C=64 and and subsequently an Amiga household growing up. External modems on sitting on the desk were our only option until I got my first x86 machine in 1995. Tweaking init strings to get the most out of that 19200 baud serial port definitely was a thing @Richard Faulkner

C=64 ? Luxury. I was crestfallen when Santa brought me a VIC-20 instead of the C=64 i asked for.. Apparently his elves thought they were the same thing.

My mates all had Ataris and Amigas that were great for games so asked my parents for a computer, they got me a 286 with EGA graphics... sucked as far as games went, but got me started down the path of IT as I learnt all the CLI stuff, writing batch files etc... remember config.sys optimisation? 🤣