Wow, the part of your life story is identical to mine. 8 years, childhood friend, Chernobyl. I admit this this experience learned me to do proper backups.
I wonder how many others of "us" are there.
I also started at 8 years old with QBASIC. But without childhood friend or Chernobyl
So my files should all still be on that 386. But I do not know if it still runs
I made a backup, on a ZIP disk. Do not know where that went
Too bad I lost my childhood programs (along with everything else) when the Chernobyl Virus ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIH_(computer_virus) ) messed up my hard drive and I tossed it (no backups of course).