so you think your pc was expensive...

BigAl · #1 07-09-2002, 02:21 AM

From a 1985 Byte magazine which I've been told to throw away. Quite interesting looking at the other adverts, 16 color 640x480 was real top-end stuff!!

Mike Needham · #2 07-09-2002, 02:54 AM

Nice find Al

Although I am sure your nearest and dearest may differ in opinion. Do I sense the start of a series of similiar funnies?...

fugitive · #3 07-09-2002, 02:59 AM

That's mighty big.....wish I'd been into puters back then so I could have experienced more of the changes.
I could swear we had a puter at a company I worked at in '88 that didn't have a hrd dr. I know it didn't have Windows. The program I was using was Lotus 123. and even though I didn't know anything about puters, I found out this thing could make simple graphs, so I made some pie charts showing the testing I was doing.
The printer was a dot matrix and my boss got so excited having a graph he could carry around, he was showing it to other managers, boy have times changed.

chris h · #4 07-09-2002, 03:29 AM

I used an Atari ST computer for amateur radio data transmissions that lacked a hard drive and used a type of floppy similar to the current but now obsolete. It was very popular in amateur radio circles as the Atari was in a steel box/chassis which reduced interference to transmissions from the computer itself. Cost me about £400 in 1986.

CJ Swartz · #5 07-09-2002, 12:37 PM

In 1984 I bought an Apple IIe -- 64 K of RAM, and the floppy disk drive was a separate peripheral that plugged into the CPU, and was a wonderful upgrade compared to the tape recorder that I had saved data on prior to using the Apple

I think it set me back about $2000 with the printer.

Later that year or early the next year, our office obtained it's first computer -- a PC with TWO floppy disc drives that were a separate unit from the CPU also, as I recall. It was so exciting to have two drives -- one for the program software and one for the data we created with the program -- memos, pie charts, etc. The floppy drives died the first week, but were under warranty and were replaced soon. Didn't have any more trouble until we purchased a 20 mb hard drive CARD which eventually overtaxed the power supply which went up in a cloud of smoke one evening... I was debating for 20 seconds at least whether to get close enough to pull the plug or just jump back before it 'exploded'.

Thank goodness, I finally pulled the plug.

I can remember thinking how wonderful it was to have 20 megs of hard drive space -- "more than we could ever use". Then, I found out about Photoshop....

chris h · #6 07-09-2002, 12:42 PM

I remember my local supplier querying an order for a 2 ghz drive in 1996, he said I'd never fill it !

G. Couch · #7 07-09-2002, 02:13 PM

ahh...the Apple II brings back good memories of Elementary school! ...LOGO, BASIC, Oregon Trail

CJ Swartz · #8 07-09-2002, 03:01 PM

Quote:

the Apple II brings back good memories of Elementary school!

Well, that's where mine ended up - donated to an elementary school. Greg - they were teaching you BASIC? Cool!

chris - did you ever manage to fill your 2 gig drive?

sohagler · #9 07-09-2002, 03:17 PM

Ah, Oregon Trail... That and MathBlaster were my introduction to computers in elementary school.

My boyfriend found an Apple II emulator with those games and set it up on my computer as a surprise around Christmas. I hunted for food and forded rivers to my heart's content.

And learning BASIC in elementary school is really cool. Well, learning any programming language in elementary school is.

--
Sonya

chris h · #10 07-09-2002, 03:27 PM

CJ, It's had a hard life but the drive a Seagate is still in use on a friends system.

chiquitita · #11 07-09-2002, 07:05 PM

Think of it this way, according to the inflation calculators, $945 then is equivelent to $1582.91 presently.

BigAl · #12 07-17-2002, 05:37 AM

All the comments about old PCs made me think back to my MSc days around 86. I used an XT compatible PC to control my instruments (one of which measured nanoamps), did huge number crunching (took 30 minutes to analyse 1 set of data until I added a numeric coprocessor, then the time dropped to about 10 minutes), plotted graphs to the screen or a plotter (remember plotters?) or printed the data on a dot matrix printer. All the software fitted on one 360kB floppy. I think I had more fun writing that software than doing the actual measurements. It was written in a mixture of Turbo Pascal, compiled BASIC and assembler.

BigAl · #13 07-17-2002, 05:54 AM

Quote:

Think of it this way, according to the inflation calculators, $945 then is equivelent to $1582.91 presently.

I see that currently you can buy a 120GB disk for $180 ($1.50/GB) compared with $94.50/MB back in 85!!!

At this price, I'm not surpirsed that software can be considered as bloatware these days

chris h · #14 07-17-2002, 12:12 PM

The programme thats been of the greatest use to me and saved hours of work is Norton Ghost and that fits on a floppy. Worth its weight in Gold !

jeaniesa · #15 07-17-2002, 10:52 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by BigAl
(remember plotters?) or printed the data on a dot matrix printer. All the software fitted on one 360kB floppy. I think I had more fun writing that software than doing the actual measurements. It was written in a mixture of Turbo Pascal, compiled BASIC and assembler.

OMG - plotters!! I had completely forgotten those things existed until you mentioned it. I used to work on the HP BASIC workstation in the graphics area, so was very familiar with that output device. AND - the BASIC workstation was written in Pascal and assembler. Ahh - those were the days! Seems like just yesterday...

Jeanie