I remember computers form work before personal computers and doing back-ups onto a tape drive. The 'cartridge' was about 18 inches in diameter and someone had to take a copy home every night.
Not too long after home pc's started coming out with the 286's. It was all DOS and I couldn't make head or tail of it. I really didn't see any use for them at home but my best buddy was all kinds of into it. He bought a 486 and kept trying to talk me into getting one too. I ended up being in a car accident and it was clear I wasn't going to be doing much but sitting for quite a while and he finally talked me into it as something to do. I was clueless and just gave him a bunch of money to get me what he though would be best. He managed to spend $4000.00 and came back with a 486 with
4mb(kb?) of RAM and
2 drives the 5 1/2 and the sure to be a hit 3.5 that nobody was using yet. The OS was windows 3.0 It took me a while to not be afraid of breaking it and the first thing he managed to get me interested in was accessing the public library. I found out that I could get anything I wanted brought to my local branch and I loved it.
Then I found out there were girls in there.
I was hooked on BBS's.
The rest is history.