Waaaaay back in 1980 I was in the 5th grade and my school got their first computer, a PET 4000 series, think was 4032 with black old datasette. I remember the school was soon to get a 2nd and maybe a disk drive. Was 4 years later before I had my first computer and many more since then. But never had a PET/CBM machine. A couple of friends, brothers often had Commodore PET's or 64's at home as their dad was a school principal so he could borrow one on weekends or summers. I spent many hours with them playing dungeon starwars weather war star trek and others. I also had some exposure to BASIC there and Wordpro (blech fart!).
It was my first as well. Prior to the PET, I wanted to get an Atari computer, but then my school got PETs. I never got enough time using them, so I ended up getting a Commodore Vic 20, reasoning that I could write programs on the VIC that I could later run on the PET. Programming looked so much easier than it was back then...
When I finally got my own computer some 4 years later I'd gone to a Woolco or Woolworths in Scarborough at Agincourt mall at Kennedy & Sheppard. I hadn't decided weather to get either Atari 600XL / 800XL or Commodore 64. It was April '84 and those were the 2 types I wanted of what was available then. As they were out of the Atari systems I got the 64 as I didn't want to wait any longer. It also helped that I could only afford $400 plus the sales tax and the 64 had been reduced to $350 and the datasette was $50 so I could get both and actually save & load. Any disk drive was well over $300 then so affording that at the same time was impossible. I did already have a 10 inch or so black & white TV I could use for a monitor at home so thats what I'd used as a monitor for nearly 3 years until end of '86 I finally got a 14 inch colour TV with composite inputs on the back. That was one of the last things I'd got after I finally had a 1541 and MPS801.