Have been lurking for a little while having found this via the main RWAP site.
Registered on this forum in late September (but does not feel like that long ago!
). I have been reading a lot of the older topics. It is such a shame that a lot of the images and other attachments do not appear to exist anymore 
I first saw, and played with a ZX81 when the then high street stores in the UK first started selling them way back in about 1982.
However the ZX Spectrum with its colour, sound and rubber keys was the first computer to make it into our house. I had much fun both with the software side and by building and playing with hardware including building some of my own circuits.
Then some years later, I decided that I had to move on from tapes. I did not fancy the Sinclair Microdrive, and disk drives for the Spectrum were still expensive, so I waited and then bought an Atari STFM.
Next up was an IBM compatible, the first in a line of "PC compatible" machines. But when Windows made it hard to access the hardware level directly I looked again at the 8 bit and 16 bit micros. Even with a "PC" I still used my Atari ST. But the ZX Spectrum had found itself boxed up and stored in the loft.
A bit (okay, lot) of internet browsing showed that various 8 bit and 16 bit microcomputers had active web sites including Sinclair, Amstrad, Acorn as well as Atari.
Thanks to various trades (including eBay and RWAP) I now have some ZX81's, various ZX Spectrums, some Amstrads, some Acorn BBC machines, some more Atari ST machines and various hardware add-ons for some of these machines.
I am mostly interested in hardware topics but also I am also interested in continuing my education of getting better at assembly language.
Mark
Standby alert 
