Least Powerful (not PowerFull) PC?

[Nick]

Is this the Least Powerful (not PowerFull) but most Expensive personal PC...?

http://hame.ca/news/pictures/ads/radioshacka.jpg

...and I thought the Compaq Presario (80486), monitor & printer I bought at the end
of 1994 cost a ton at $3,000.

[Draconis]

Oh man, that brings back memories.

[cadet502]

monitor and mouse not included
LOL

Doesn't even mention a hard drive. At first I thought the main reason for the big price was the 2megs of ram, that was a lot in 89.

I paid over $3000 for a 386SX in 89, but at least it came with a monitor and mouse, and a 20meg hard drive. I think it may have had a whopping 512k ram.

[Draconis]

512k is more than enough cadet502, especially if you listen to Bill Gates

"Nobody will ever need more than 512k RAM" - Bill Gates, 1981

[smiddy]

Whoa! I forgot about those days.

[Richard King]

Whoa! I forgot about those days.you obviously needed a memory upgrade. :D

[Steve Mehs]

'Lightning fast 20Mhz' :lol:

Is that Adobe PageMaker? OS/2 how I miss thee. NOT!

[dave29]

wow, thats funny. where did you dig that up at?

[Pinion413]

That's quite amusing. Even though I was a young'n, I still remember those days quite well. It's amazing to see how far home computing technology has come in the last 20 years. :lol:

[BaldEagle]

Seems like we paid about that in the office I worked at in 1983. IBM computer with 256RAM (could have been 512), 5" floppy, no software, and no hard drive. The first time we used it to combine 32 stores P & L's for a district total it ran out of memory. Had to buy more ram and I think that (additional 256) cost over $700.

We also paid over $400 for a Lotus123 number cruncher software program to do the P & L's and over $350 for word perfect to do any correspondence.

[djlong]

I have "Creative Computing" issues from the late 1970s. The ads in there are like a history lesson.

[HIPAR]

I'm wasn't exactly poor back then but I wouldn't spend that kind of money on a PC either now or then.

--- CHAS

[B Newt]

'Lightning fast 20Mhz' :lol:

Is that Adobe PageMaker? OS/2 how I miss thee. NOT!

OS/2 blewaway the original version of windoz!:thats:

[HIPAR]

OS/2 blewaway the original version of windoz!:thats:

OS2 had the same problem Linux has today; poor device support. I have a copy of OS2 Warp collecting dust somewhere in my basement. I couldn't get the video working properly so I went back to Windoze.

--- CHAS

[4DThinker]

It's hard to believe it's not a typo where the 8499 was really supposed to be $499, and the type setters doing the ad didn't have a "$" to use, or at least failed to read the poorly written ad copy and mistook the $ for an 8.

[Nick]

Not hardly - in 1989, those specs were fairly high-end, and you have to about double
the price because it was sold by Radio Shack. Back then there was no such thing
as a $499 pc.

[HighVoltage]

Back then there was no such thing
as a $499 pc.

:confused: Guess it depends on your definition of PC (personal computer)... Amiga, Atari St, Apple IIgs, etc. all fell around that price.

[bobnielsen]

I think my first PC in 1985 was around $2500 (Compaq 8086 DeskPro). I found a lot of software wouldn't run on it.

[Stuart Sweet]

Hardly. The first IBM PC I worked on, which was the first IBM PC, had a 4.77MHz (.00477 GHz) processor and one floppy drive, no hard drive. 128K (.125MB, roughly .001GB) of memory.

[cadet502]

Hardly. The first IBM PC I worked on, which was the first IBM PC, had a 4.77MHz (.00477 GHz) processor and one floppy drive, no hard drive. 128K (.125MB, roughly .001GB) of memory.

Sounds like as much fun as a DEC "robin". Can't recall the speed or memory, but I remember when we added a second dual floppy drive, we were cooking with gas. Imagine being able to run the O/S, dBaseII?, and a data disk without having to swap floppies. :grin: