[gnufx]

I'd suggest more interesting systems, but probably interesting in inverse proportion to how you could get hold of one :-/. Not wanting to dampen enthusiasm for old systems, but was there anything radically different about things like C64 and Acorn products?

If you don't need hardware, there might be more interest in programming on simulators for various old systems.

[renewedrebecca]

For the C64 at least, the cool thing is the absolute lack of abstractions. The entire memory map is known. The entire Kernal is documented. The hardware, totally explained. You can actually know everything there is to know about the whole machine. Totally different than modern computing / coding.

[gnufx]

Good point, that we've mostly gone backwards in that respect. Sites did used to have source for all the software and hack on it, and detailed docs on the hardware that wasn't self-built.