1996 - Professional 6 with free upgrade to 7 when it came out. Win95 (what a nightmare!) Ensoniq sound card.

Upgraded to Turtle Beach Pinnacle 20bit sound card about a year later.

Coming from two trk reel to reels, and four trk Vestax cassette recorder, I never looked back.

Vesion 3.0 for Windows 3.1.  2013 is the year I finally moved on to another DAW.

Another newbie here.  Sonar Power Studio 660 (I think) - basically Sonar 6 Studio with a Cakewalk version of the FA-66 firewire interface.
 
Before that it was tape, and various hardware sequencers (e.g. Roland MC-500, MC-50), and Sequencer One(?) on the Amiga.

I started in 1998 with Pro Audio 6, a Gina card from Echo for audio, and a Soundblaster card for MIDI.

GTex62
...Cakewalk v1.0 on a 5.25" floppy disk...
 

I'm a bit behind you.  I started with version 1.1d.  The next version (2.0) came on a 3.5" floppy.

Man, some real old timers here. Cake v 4.0 here....3.5 floppy. I still have them here. I thought for sure I started at 3.0, but can't seem to find the floppies. Whenever it was, Cake was in Best Buy. I saw it, it looked cool and I tried it. Quite a change from 1 inch and 2 inch tape...which is what I was using at the time. Whew, what a ride it's been. Though there are loads of things that annoy me about computer recording, most of that stems from things I'd never be able to do with my tape machines. There are more things that DO NOT annoy me though...so even though I have both of my tape machines still, I don't miss them for a second.
 
-Danny

I started with Cake back in...a long time ago and still
trying to learn how to record...and nothing about it is credited to loyalty.
It's been about "hope".
Now I'm hoping X3c and my computer will last long enough before everything
changes again to let me record a few tunes...that will pobably suck.
Well...at least my computer skills are getting better. Maybe I should be like FBB and
record that. ;)

A' Cakewalk' slot machine on Canvey Island (UK) caravan park amusements hall in 1964. Beat that.....still analogue !!!!

Sonar 3 after the abandonment of logic pc. How could they do that to me? I'm over it really, mostly.  :) Actually really enjoy Sonar. It's always performed above and beyond for my needs.

pagec
A' Cakewalk' slot machine on Canvey Island (UK) caravan park amusements hall in 1964. Beat that.....still analogue !!!!

wow - people went to Canvey for amusement?!
(btw i'm near Southend)