Early Daze
The first hands on, starting in 1975 was with DEC PDP 11 class 'mini' computers. Oh the joy of toggling in octal bootstrap loaders from the front pannel. We were in heaven when we got a paper tape reader to load the boot.
The 80's - - DEC VAX 780 - and IBM 4300's were standard machines in small university data centers. We ran academics off the dec equipment, and administrative work off big blue.
There's gonna be a (micro) Revolution
Frustrated by Oregon State Universities ability to destroy my data sets at every opportunity, I bought my first personal computer in 1981. This machine changed my career trajectory. I was a 'computer expert' in 1982 when the first IBM PC came out.