over 50? How is your heart? A quick poll on a very relevant subject.

[Bellepheron]

The interest in computers stemed from the fasination with electronics. Throughtout he sixties I dismantled and assempled radios and early valve TVs. Then Clive Sinclair brought out his electronic 4 function calculator in 1972. He was selling it , I think, for £72. To me an absolute fortune in the early 70s. So, I built one and it worked. Transistors open the door for more electronic circuits and many of us discovered the way of creating programs of less than 1KB to turn small bulbs on and off in various sequences. My first real computor was a Tandy TRS80 and while many were getting to grips with machines such as those being sold buy Sinclair, Commodore, and Apple, I was getting to grips with machine code and early basic. Many of these early machines come without keyboards, monitors, or storage devices and it was up to the enthusiast to assemble the components as cheaply as they could.
From there the rest is history as computers have progressed very fast and reasonably cheap.

Stick at it folks as these beasts will evolve faster than anything else on the planet.
Now? Im a big fan of the Raspberry Pi and the Linux OS. These machines offer advanced features which you build and modify yourself. Sounds like this is how I started.

Good Luck All