I had a BBC Model B for some years as well and they were a pretty nice little micro. They still have a big following in Britain today and BBC-related stuff shows up on eBay all the time.
Before the BBC, I built an Acorn Atom from a kit. This was virtually the predecessor to the BBC, as it was Acorn which extended the design and sold the BBC on it for their computer literacy project.
In the days when I was still at school and unable to afford a computer of my own I had to "make do" with the school computers: We had a Research Machines 380Z micro, and a room which was full of an old Elliot 803 and its peripherals. The local tech college had a PDP-11/40 at that time, and we had a terminal at school, or I'd go down to the college's "terminal room" some evenings. That had something like twenty or more ASR33 teletypes clunking away in it -- It was almost like working in a machine shop!
