[dnel]

My uncle was the computer guy of the family. I remember playing on his Amstrad 1640 when I was very young. I always wanted a home computer desperately but my dad never had an interest or saw it useful to encourage my passion for it. It wasn't until my uncle eventually upgraded from his 8086/640KB Amstrad to a Pentium 60 then he gave me the old Amstrad and I was hooked. This was probably about 96/97 so this was already vintage hardware and my attempts to run anything contemporary was frustrating, but that didn't stop me trying to squeeze out every drop of performance from the old beast. I had it for many years and eventually my experiments in trying to get more out of it broke it and it went to the tip. I could probably have repaired it easily just a few years later but I guess that's the tragedy of youth. I'm tempted to buy another 1640 to remember those days but I know it would never be the same.