Me too! On a bunch of old 486 machines my high school library threw in the trash (I fished them out after school)

Frankensteined a few together until I had 4 machines, connected their serial ports, and learnt C and how to use a chess library to make them play chess against each other, it took me years but I leant heaps,

Also got my first exposure to a decent graphical desktop, Desqview/X!