I was REALLY cheap at first. Got a junk BAUDOT teletype, looked like a mail box.
Dial-up 110 baud with dot-matrix printer.
Then I was a spendthrift and got a CompuPro 8085/8088 S-100 system with dual 8" floppies. Nothing today boots that fast, including my Lenovo at work or Dell Precision with SSD at home. "Click-Click" in 1/2 second and it was up. Qume and Diablo daisy wheels - much better fonts than early LaserJet.
First job out of college, I was writing (self-test) microcode at HP for their new CISC machine of the 3000 series. Then implementing parts of RISC at transistor, leaf cell, programmable logic array level.
Now I talk to instruments with MatLab on Windows, and can't get decent rate of multiple transactions. It can be done, instruments on the bench have that inside, I just don't know how. So much standing between me and the transistors. But with some drivers and interfaces, can transfer big files of captured data efficiently.
Just got my new "Bulk Current Injection" EMI test system in at work, will set that up when have time.