I'm pretty sure my timeline is correct on Windows 3.1. It came out in 1992, right about the time I got my first IBM PC. It was a 386 that ran on DOS and I remember having to get a math co-processor just to run Windows.
Around that time, I got a 129MB hard drive to go with the 80MB I already had and I thought I was on top of the world.
Yes, MB, not GB!
I also built my own PCs back in the day. I would get the Chassis w/power supply and outfit it with my preference of motherboard, video card, RAM, hard drives and other extension cards. Those were good times.
I know that IBM personal computers first came out in 1981 and the Apple PC a few years before that even.
Yes. I got my Apple II PC in 1977. They were advertised as "PC" back then. All of 4K RAM memory, of which only 2K was usable by me for programs, written to cassette tape. I soon added floppy drives, more memory, then a hard drive and modified the motherboard with my own code in EPROMS. I still have that machine, upgraded to run on a flash drive with thousands of programs built in, with speech and music processors, still runs.
But, for my jobs I needed IBM PCs, got a 80186 running 6MHz. Faster and better machines came out at a brisk pace in the early 1980s, and got cheaper. The thing I liked about early machines was the ability to easily manipulate the hardware and software, even controlling floppy and hard drives at the byte level (where you could defeat copy protection on hidden tracks). All concepts that matched the big machines I worked on (mainframe and mini computers).
All this was similar to automobiles. One of my hobbies was working on cars, where I rebuilt engines and transplanted them in different cars. Now, I won't touch modern engines with all the computer components in them. I still have a couple 1960's era cars that are very easy to work on, modified the intake ports and cams. I imagine that it is the same case with early EVs, easy for hobbyists to tinker with, before they become too complicated as they are improved. I have an EV that I've owned for 5 years, and might tinker with it when it gets older just for the heck of it.