I am not really sure about the exact years as such. However I can tell the story of those moments....
My mother used to work at at company, were she would draw up blue prints on power lines. Not the average low voltage 220 household lines. Oh no. The real juicy stuff like kilovolt lines hanging in masts and transformer stations. Right before pension, she worked a number of years on the first Danish sea based wind mill farm. Anyway... To the point. The first computers that I saw in person, was the console/computer (too young to remember anything else than a monitor) at her desk. And then her explaining that it was connected to a server room. I asked her if I were allowed to see the room, and she took me down. Lo and behold. The room was packed with big blue metal monsters, and I was explained how they swapped out the big wheel's of tapes. How they would change the big platter storage, that were kept in giant semi-transparent orange plastic cartridges. It might have been eighter an IBM system or Digital system that were installed. Yet I was instantly hooked on giant noisy metallic monsters. I tried to tell the story at school, however nobody in my class would believe me. That there were such giant monsters that could do that. I guess they were only told about radio tube computers, from what their parents knew about. I was the early 1980's however, and nobody really knew anything about computer technology in my home town.
Fast forward a couple of years. And I was around 8, possible 9 years old. I remember it so well. It was just before X-Mas in 1985, and we had to visit my fathers little sister. Her son, my cousin, proudly displayed his new Commodore64 that he had bought for his own money the day before. He had the computer, a joystick and a datasette. He did not show many games, however he loaded up some kind of program. And I was hooked. The following year, he introduced me to: 1942, Winter Games and Super Cycle. The computer was put into the guest room and I always asked my uncle if me and my brother were alowed to play a game or two. That C64 experience cemented something deep inside me. I was actually wondering if it was possible to merge those big giant blue monsters to a C64. Well.... I have yet to see it specifically.
A year later, the son of one of my fathers co-worker had gotten an C64 as well. And everytime we visited them, I played games on that machine with him. He did a lot of piracy, and so I was introduced to the art of numbering Floppy Disks, and write the name of the games and disk content/numbers down in a book. The longer the list, the more respect you had from your fellow C64 owners. Yes. It was piracy, however the computer world in private homes, were kind of the wild west back then. Pirating games were kind of a sport back then, and nobody raised an eye brow. Even the children of police officers did it, and everyone knew about this. Ohh... Times have changed.
Next story is a couple of years later on... It might have been last half of 1987 or first half of 1988. Then that son of my fathers co-worker had a giant upgrade. Of course I knew nothing about it, because my parents did not care for computers at home at that point. I thought that I was to visit and play C64 games. Oh boy was I in for a treat. It was the day I was introduced to Amiga. He had sold his C64, and saved up for an Amiga500. Damn... I still remember seing 3.5 inch disks for the first time. The design of the physical machine it self were something completely new. The sounds of the drive. Yes everything. I must have spend the first 30 minutes to 60 minutes, just looking at the lines of that beauty. Not really caring about what was displayed on the television. And then I discovered the GFX, the sounds. Yes. It was that giant game changer, that rarely are experienced. Going from knowing the C64 as the absolute best and highest quality and then being thrown an Amiga500 at you!!! Oh boy....
Then a couple of weeks later, my parents bought their first computer. It was a Unisys PW/2 Series 300 computer. Complete with 3-button optical mouse, Cherry MX based keyboard, EGA monitor and Star LC-10 B/W matrix printer. The machine was a 286 8/10mhz, with EGA card, 640k Ram and 20mb Miniscribe Harddisk. (I am the owner now). Besides the printer not being at my place, I have the complete machine in original state. Still working, and all I ever had to do, was to change the battery and the floppy drive. Else it is original. I even have all the manuals in mint condition. Now. That machine and the Amiga500's were what shaped me in my teens. I have basically grown up, with 286 in my childhood home, and used Amiga500 just as much at friends houses. Our library even had computers. They started with a C64 setup around 1987 (first Model-C machine, that are also last longboard model) and then around 1991, they swapped it out with an Amiga500-Plus and then in 1992 they swapped that to an Amiga600-HD.
Then fast forward (again) to 1993, were I bought my first computer for my own money. It was a 486-slc2-50 machine. 4mb Ram, 120mb Conner HDD, ET4000, Floppy Drive and some kind of Sound Galaxy. Most likely a Sound Galaxy NX-Pro 16 card or something like that. The motherboard was one of those Alaris or leopard or something, were the resistor packs were these red ones and the CPU were soldered on. Yeah.... I was not really happy about it, so I upgraded the machine to a 486dx2-66 machine around Feb/Mar of 1995. I bought an Edom 486VL3H motherboard (still have the manual) an iWill Side Jr Pro VLB-Controller, CL5428-VLB and 8 mb Ram. Then a couple of months later my Sound galaxy died for some odd reason and I bought a Sound Blaster 16 Value Edition card instead. That machine served me well.
Then I discovered Unix, Linux, Os/2 and all the other Dos versions (IBM and so on) back in 1995. I even tested Win95 beta's and Test releases. Good times.... Good times.
The rest is more or less just history. Except for that fatal job, that made me drop interrest in everything computer related. That fatal job was between 2003 and 2006. I was hired for my dream job. (Or so I thought it was) The job was to build around 10 computers a day. (Or so I was told at the job interview) The job position were much more "sadistic". The demand was to build at least 12, preferable 15 machines a day, as a minimum. All parts were retail packed as the boss for some reason had negotiated a better deal that way on parts. Meaning everything had to be taken out of shiny colourfull boxes and so on. He bought semi-defect and low grade Ram, because that was cheaper. And we were demanded to first do Memtest86 and then do a complete test install of WinXp. No. Not unattended. A real install. Then blank the HDD and pack the computer in the case-box. On top of that, I was also given the task of handeling all phone support all day long as the only person in the company, and respond to all email support untill lunch. And no, if they called sales department and said that support was unavaliable, I would have a boss screaming into my ear. And if number of finished computers were not met at the end of the day, I would have a screaming boss in my ear as well.
Never the less. Income dropped in the company through feb 2006. And I was fired, because he was unable to pay me. And I became a mailman. Then I discovered Vogons around 2014 and all is hostory.