This thread got me thinking about my early computer days last night. I also had a DEC Rainbow when I was a kid. My dad worked at TI and then later at DEC.
http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/computer.asp?st=1&c=284
The Rainbow was nearly worthless by the time I got it. Incompatible with practically everything. But it was a fun machine to play around with and learn on. I had a dial-in account on a VAX mainframe. That was around 1988 maybe? I thought it was so cool to send "email" to other VAX users, but it was totally worthless.
Then we got our first IBM PC clone in 1989. We bought it from a place that seemed more like a car dealership than todays PC stores, I guess because PCs were so expensive them. Our next clone had the "turbo" button to increase processor speed from 4.77MHz to 6MHz. As I remember, this was done because some IBM PC software would only run at 4.77MHz, the speed of the original 8088 processor. I learned GW-BASIC, then Turbo Pascal, and then C on that "AT" and then got my own 80386 when I was in 8th grade. My first modem was a 300 baud brick that was bigger than some laptops are now. When I got my first 2400 baud modem, I was amazed by the speed increase. Spent a lot of time on BBS's in the early 90's. My friend and I modified modem comm programs so we could cheat at online games ("doors" in BBS terms, not sure why). We got "Prodigy" around that time, which was an early "online service provider". I was already using the "Internet" by dialing into the VAX, but Prodigy was a lot more user friendly and had a ton of cool features (weather, email, info, etc). Then I was "too cool" for computers until about 4 years later when I built a Pentium 133MHz whitebox. It is amazing how far things have come. My iPhone does more than I ever thought a computer would be able to do when I first starting playing around on that TI-99 when I was a kid.
Sorry for the rambling trip down computer memory lane. Guess I was pretty lucky to have access to so many computers when I was young.