My 1st PC was a Z80 Model I Radio Shack pieced together from units with problems. I built the power supply for it and the 2 8” floppies and the enclosure for the floppies. And hard wired stacked CPU chips on the motherboard, did not use the expansion interphase (was big issue with them). Hand wired the strobe pulse to each stacked CPU chip.
Had a monochrome green phosphor monitor and a tape drive for mass storage. It actually worked pretty well. I still have it somewhere in my shop.
That had to be the noisiest computer ever built. Don’t put a receiver anywhere near it. No shielding. I’m a Ham Op and the two interests with that PC were incompatible.
But I had a lot of software for it. I spent more on the printer than the rest of the PC. Had a wide carriage dot matrix Epson printer. Paid $625 for it back then.
I was living in NM then. I had previously drooled over the MIT Computers ( http://pc-history.org/altair.htm ) made in Albuquerque. Still have a couple of new enclosures that I bought surplus for one of those machines. Pretty nice boxes. I bought them for a receiver project I was working on. Never used them.
Interesting how all this played out.
I had bought the SYM-1 for a computer applications class. It used an audio backup scheme to cassete tape.
After that I didn’t have a PC for years. I worked as a NASA contractor and when I heard a co-worker had a PC at home, I’d ask what they did on it. I’d get answers like: keep recipes on it, Maintain my checkbook information, etc. etc.
It wasn’t until I learned I could access the library systems with one, that I saw the need. Access to information!
Using Archie and Gopher and bulletin boards was such a pain, but I was hooked.
Up to today, I have home built every PC I have ever had.