It was summer of 1997, I was in the 9th grade. My father had promised to buy me a computer after the exams. This PC arrived when I was away at a summer camp. I was so excited to get back home and check it out. It was a Pentium machine, with 256 MB RAM, SoundBlaster card, SVGA display and a 80 GB HDD (I think!). They keyboard and mouse were top notch. So were the speakers, these were original Creative speakers. The CD-ROM had a slim remote which I loved. Initially we had a stabilizer attached to the system. After my first HDD went down we opted for a UPS. The printer was a Canon device, which my father was reluctant to purchase initially. I think we brought it after an year of purchasing the PC.
We did not have internet access for a couple of years. The best source of software were CDs that shipped with magazines like Chip and Digit. Back then I used to clean my PC every week. Everyone used to come to our house to see it. We (me and my brother) mostly played games on it for first few months. Then slowly I started learning programming on it. I couldn’t use it much during my 10th grade, as I had promised my parents I would concentrate on my studies. I made most of it after 10th board exams and all through the first year of my junior college (11th grade).
