The first time I recall seeing a microcomputer, I was nine(1980-81). It was a little Texas Instruments model with a cartridge slot and a ``chiclet'' keyboard. It was purchased for the school's ``gifted and talented'' program only just begun that year. (I understand it's now referred to as the ``enriched'' program in the interest of protecting students from being offended by the idea that some students might excel in certain areas)
You couldn't do too much on that little machine. I remember there being a cartridge for the LOGO educational language and spending hours playing Hunt the Wumpus. But that was enough. That summer, I spent a week or so at a ``computer camp'' at the University of New Orleans. There was a whole lab of gleaming new Apple ]['s. Some of them even had floppy disk drives. We learned a little BASIC, a little AppleDOS, and a little bit of machine knowledge: bits, bytes, CPU, etc.
A conference room at my school was converted over the summer to a computer lab with several Apple ]['s. One of them actually had a color monitor and a drawing tablet (Koala Pad). The group of us spent all our time in those labs. We played all of the early Sierra adventure games. I vividly remember the old Apple version of Castle Wolfenstein. A couple of us starting working on an adventure game of our own written in BASIC and illustrated with the Koala Pad. We put on a play and I designed the play's program on an early word-processor.
I begged for an Apple. But it was just too expensive. I read computer magazines and settled on an Atari 800. I got an Atari 400 with a cassette drive.