My first machine was a Commodore Vic-20. I loved the ability to 'wedge' into its operating system using assembly language, and change the way things were done. At this point, there wasn't an internet, so I had to rely on books on the subject, available from the local book store and/or library. I made a homemade modem using a 300 baud Motorola chip, a breadboard, a cannibalized wired phone from the local drug store, and a wedged assembly program to convert the V20's character set to ASC. Using this, I called local BBS's and chatted, and played trade wars (early versions).
My next machine was a Commodore C64. Again, I was able to write programs in assembly, and with the new peripherals (5.25 floppy drive the size of a small toaster oven), and serial communications, I was able to wedge into the 6502 and 6510 processor on that device and give myself a bi-directional 16 bit I/O port, and the ability to control external hardware. Special thanks to my favorite game at the time (Apache Gunship) for teaching me the inner-workings of some of the earliest copy protection the computer world had ever seen.
Then I stumbled upon the world of the PC compatible via a Packard Bell 8088. I didn't do it when I mothballed the machine, but I would have liked to have killed it via high-explosive. Reason being; proprietary hardware, and lack of support.
I was finally introduced into the 16 bit world via a gift from my mom and stepfather, as they sent me home with a 286 motherboard after a family visit in Nevada.
I did a 386 (a few levels), then a 486, leading to a 486-DX100 that I was fairly proud of, and I think that was when I bought my first Maxtor drive (300mb for $299) at Circuit Specialists.
After other upgrades here-and-there, I felt I was high-and-mighty with a Pentium 3 450MHz. An H-SLOT, and when the proprietary cooling fan went out, and Intel told me I'd be down for a couple of days until my new processor arrived, I decided to go AMD after hearing how wonderful the AMD was from SMO (toxicmussels), my friend at the time. Advice I am eternally grateful for.
I've been AMD ever since, although about a month ago, I did a P4-3GHz for myself. I'm now running three machines, 2 AMD, and the aforementioned P4, and networked to the wall.
I can't even imagine what the op-codes for these new processors are, since I haven't touched assembly since the 286, but I can't help but think back to when I had to convert each received character to ASC, and manually handle buffers, in order to chat on the early locally dialed IBM PC-CLUB BBS's in text-only format.
Hop