My original and best <3
Ahh the memories ...
I started school in the late 80s when BBCs and Acorns were the stalwart of school computing. I became something of an "expert" - I was the computer monitor, setting people up with floppy disks, messing with settings etc. Later we got an A3010 at home (2MB RAM, no HDD) and I learned to code in BASIC, writing/hacking WIMP programs, messing with SWIs and modules. My friend brought round a modem and we connected to Arcade BBS and downloaded a game which was beyond comprehension at the time. At secondary school I'd have many arguments with PC advocates about how much better Acorns were (Windows 3.11 was still the PC game in town) and I was obsessive to a fault.
In my late teens as schools abandoned this kit, I used to post on education newsgroups offering to "clear out" their old computers and make a donation to school funds which they were happy to accept (now this is a very common business model for companies needing old kit clearing out). At one point I had 20 RiscPCs, I removed all the podules and network interfaces and sold them on eBay to enthusiasts, and then sold the remaining computers to an Acorn dealer for several more times than I'd paid for all the kit in the first place. At 17 years old this was eye-watering money.
Also during that time I got my hands on a BBC Doomsday setup. It didn't work (laser disc player issue), but I had remembered using it at school in the library and being mesmerised by walking around a virtual town (as per Google Maps today). I wish I had kept hold of it. I actually had the two laserdiscs, immaculate in original packaging. Imagine that. That system was unbelievably impressive, given the hardware available and how they made it work.
Later (1999) I moved into the world of the internet/WWW which became my bread and butter, learning Linux and HTML and so on, and now I work on a cloud software platform. But those BBC and Acorn days set me up for a lifetime of success and I had a lot of fun (and made some good money) along the way. I'm grateful to the teachers who saw my passion/aptitude for computers and gave me after school access and privileges afforded to few others, and to those who hired me straight out of school at 16 so I could work at my passion.
In my latter teenage years and early twenties I managed to convert myself from a full on nerd to something more of a geek, forcing myself to learn social skills resulting in my time becoming more full of distractions like women and exercise and all that boring stuff rather than quite so much tinkering and late nights in front of a VDU. But some part of me still dreams of a room full of all this old kit, if only just to reminisce, and I can't help but get excited once in a while figuring out a solution to something using a Pi or Arduino and so on. Inner nerds truly never die.
God bless you Acorn and RISC OS. In many ways you were ahead of your time and were "beaten" by an inferior Wintel product. I won't lie, it warms my heart that today I am writing this on an M1 Pro Mac ... a fitting full circle.