It&#x27;s not even a hobbyist slant - it&#x27;s domestic nostalgia.<p>These were all machines that were easily portable and you could - in theory - have them at home.<p>A lot of people did. The UK got a huge start with computing because there was a rash of cheap home machines in the early 80s. It even had its own early startup scene, with kids writing games in machine code and selling the tapes from print magazine ads.<p>The US had a more complicated scene with an early peak of S100 hardware losing against Apple and IBM&#x27;s marketing talents, followed by a round of new innovations from Tandy, Atari, and Amiga.<p>Mainframes, minis, and workstations were a lot more advanced technically, but you couldn&#x27;t build a business around one without huge capital investment. So most of the population never used one personally.