IBM PC/XT with 8086, 640k, CGA card, but monochrome monitor, dual floppy, +32mb HD. Also, I had a math coprocessor.
lol great thread. First PC was a Compaq Deskpro with an 8086. I replaced it with a 286 Deskpro. First laptop (same era) was a 1989 GRiD 286 laptop running Papyrus charting and Bruce option analytics. Led to a briefcase system with a 21" Plasmaco monitor. Then a Dolch lunchbox.
The first computer that I built for my master thesis project was based on a S100 bus. The school bought a single-board (S100) computer - Intel 8086 CPU plus 8087 math coprocessor, another S100 board for I/Os (keyboard, floppy drive, etc. but no mouse), and another S100 board for video capturing. Operating System: CP/M. Ever heard of them? Before Bill Gates stole a lot of the concepts (like "A:" and "B:") to incorporate them into DOS. If it wasn't from that fateful day Gary Kildall was not home when IBM visited him at his house, the whole world today might just be running the offspring operating systems from CP/M instead of DOS/Windows. In CP/M, you need to soft-map the physical device to the logical device, like "PIP LPT:=CON" to send what you typed to the line printer, something like that.
i had a c-64 and 800xl. my favorite 8-bit computer in those days was the apple iic. it had a great feeling keyboard. but only schools and rich people could afford them. but my dream computer was the colleco adam. unfortunately they were too expensive so my parents wouldn't buy me one. luckily they didn't buy it because they didn't sell well and were canceled after a year. did anyone even make any software for it?