The Times They Are A-Changin'

[crokett]

My sister called to ask if these were decent specs on a new computer:

2Gb DDR2 RAM
Core 2 Duo 3.0Ghz
256 MB graphics card (Ithink ATI)
16x DVDRW
ASUS Mobo

Guy wants 700 for hardware, assembled. OS is not included, but he will install for free if she buys the license.

I remember spending about that much on:
CPU - AMD Athlon Thunderbird 850mhz
RAM - 512MB
Graphics - ATI All-in-Wonder w/TV Tuner - 32MB
Ethernet - 10Mb
DVD - 2x (reader, not writer)
ASUS Motherboard

I also remember spending just over 1K on

CPU - Pentium 133
RAM - 256MB
Graphics - some cheap card
Ethernet - what's that? I had a rockin' 33.6 modem, baby!
DVD - HAHAHA! I can't remember if I even had a CD drive in it.

[Alex Franke]

... or TWICE that much on an Atari 800, 64k RAM, Epson MX-80, and Hayes 300 baud modem.

Times they are a-changing indeed!

[Uncle Cracker]

I remember spending $2800 on the first generation Compaq "Suitcase" portable. It was "loaded" with a 10MB hard drive. What an improvement over my IBM PC with double 5-1/4" floppies and NO hard drive...

[RayintheUK]

I paid £520 (around $750 then) for an black-only HP Deskjet+ printer when they first came out!

Ray.

[LarryG]

I once bought a 16MB -- note, that says MEGAbyte -- memory stick for $375. Why, you might ask, would I pay such a huge sum for such a piece? Because it was used, and $375 was exactly half the price of a new one. And no, it wasn't a premium price because I had some off-the-wall make/model of computer that no one had ever heard of. It was for a perfectly ordinary 486SX machine.

My original Compaq Portable came with two floppy drives (5.25", 360KB each) and cost $1649. I soon added a 20MB Plus HardCard, a hard disk on an expansion card, that cost $700, or $35 per megabyte. If that same price ratio held true today, a 250GB drive would cost you a cool $437,500.

[dkerfoot]

Yep - I upgraded from 4 sticks of 256k each to 4 1MB sticks for $200 so that I didn't have to run Windows 3 in "Real" mode. I think I still have those 256k SIPPs (SIMMs pith pins instead of card edges) around somewhere.


What is the moral of the story? Put your money into real tools that will last a lifetime and stay on the trailing edge when dealing with technology.

[Uncle Cracker]

IIRC, one of the biggest spikes for memory pricing was when two of the three main chip manufacturing facilities in Japan went down at the same time. One was KO'd by a fire, but I don't remember the other problem... Just remember that memory was easily half the cost of the computer back then...

[JR]

MAC 512 KE with Imagewriter dot matrix printer. $2,500 using my BIL's university discount. Included AppleTalk 256 Kb LAN.

The E was becuase it came with an external 800KB floppy drive in addition to the internal one.

JR

edit: Thinking about it now, I realize the internal floppy was 400 KB.

[MikeMcCoy]

I don't remember what it cost but back in the mid 80's, we used a TRS 80 from Radio Shack to keep our flight op records aboard ship. A whole 640k of floppy memory.

[vaking]

All true but I remember other things too. I remember paying 99 cents for a gallon of gasoline. I also remember that my first computer made less noise than a shopvac and did not need a water cooler. And now computers are consuming more energy than airlines and in my company an engineer that can keep data center cool is in highest demand.

[dkerfoot]

I also remember that my first computer made less noise than a shopvac

I remember back in '82 or '83 when floppy disk drives sounded like you were cutting rebar concrete with a dull circular saw. You could hear the clunking and grinding two doors down!

[Schleeper]

I remember back in '82 or '83 when floppy disk drives sounded like you were cutting rebar concrete with a dull circular saw. You could hear the clunking and grinding two doors down!

And yet, it was still a lot quieter (and faster) than punching and compiling decks of punch cards. (And the disks took up less space!)

[twistsol]

in the early 80's I worked for an Apple, Digital, Epson, Kaypro dealer as the service manager. Back then you could literally know everything about all the software available, and could tell what was wrong with most machines by the sounds they were or weren't making.

A correction: The E in the Mac 512E stood for enhanced because it had an 800K double sided floppy drive instead of the 400K single sided floppy drive used on the original 128K Mac and the first 512K Mac.

[JR]

A correction: The E in the Mac 512E stood for enhanced because it had an 800K double sided floppy drive instead of the 400K single sided floppy drive used on the original 128K Mac and the first 512K Mac.

I guess you're right. Obviously my memory is fading after 20+ years! I think, though, that I might have had an external 400KB drive. External 800Ks might not have been available. Who knows, it's ancient history.

JR

[Russianwolf]

I remember buying single sided floppies and converting them to dual sided with a hole punch.