A trip into computer history

[Chris Blount]

Just found this stored on the Google newsgroups from 1987. It's the FidoNet Newsletter. Very interesting reading. The old Tandy computer are mentioned and get a load of this paragraph:

Good news! Effective July 1, the prices on our 20 and
40Mb internal hard disk kits are being substantially reduced.
The 20Mb kit is reduced from $799 to $599, and the 40Mb drops
from $1,799 to $1,399.
Also on July 1, the CM-11 monitor was reduced from
$459.95 to $399.95, and the T-1000 256K memory kit dropped
from $99.95 to $79.95.


http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=2699%40hoptoad.uucp&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain

[Giljorak]

I remember in 1981 when I convinced my step-dad into buying a used Apple ][. It cost $2500, it came with an 11 inch green screen monitor, 1 - 5.25 inch 360k floppy drive, and 1 - 16k ram card to supplement the 48k of ram that was on the main board. I still have that computer and it still works just fine. That computer helped turn me into the techno geek I am today. :D

[Bogy]

Browsing through Best Buy a few days ago I was reminded of the first hard drive I bought. I was looking at 200 gig drives for about $300. I bought my first MFM 30 meg drive for $280.

[firephoto]

I just bought a 120 gigabyte drive for $98 and it has 8mb of cache on it. ;) Probably more computing power just in that drive than there is in my old Zenith ZDS laptops circa 1986. :lol:

I'll have 220 gigs of hard drive storage with 3 drives plus a cd burner and a dvd burner. Total cost for those 5 drives was about $400 in the last 18 months. Adding another 512mb of ram too to I'll have 1 gig of ram that cost $202 (116+86). I can remember when I was trying to buy some dram chips for a 386 board I had and it was going to cost me over $100 for 2mb I think. Times have changed. :)

[AllieVi]

I have an old periodical from sometime in 1981 ("Personal Computing", as I recall) stored somewhere that makes interesting reading. How far we've come...

[Mark Holtz]

I remember looking at a Byte magazine that was in the college library published in 1974. Quite a change indeed.

It is also amazing how much hard drives have changed in the past few years.

[Bogy]

Yesterday I received my latest toy, er, business tool, direct from Sony since it isn't in the stores yet. A Clie TJ35 PDA. It comes with 32 meg of RAM built in. 2 more than that first HD I bought, for $60 less. All in a 3X4X less than a half inch package. My first computer had a color monitor, with all of 16 colors. This has 65,000 colors, although it is a slightly smaller screen

[RichW]

Well, can anyone read 8-inch floppies that I have on my DEC LSI/11. That beast set me back around $4K, just to play "ADVENTURE" and "DUNGEON". :)

Bogy, congrats on your PDA. I feel naked if I don't have mine with me at all times. It's my calendar, to-do list, and address book, of course. But it is also my MP3 player, my audiobook reader, my GPS, and my Universal Remote Control.

[Bogy]

Well, can anyone read 8-inch floppies that I have on my DEC LSI/11. That beast set me back around $4K, just to play "ADVENTURE" and "DUNGEON". :)

Bogy, congrats on your PDA. I feel naked if I don't have mine with me at all times. It's my calendar, to-do list, and address book, of course. But it is also my MP3 player, my audiobook reader, my GPS, and my Universal Remote Control.
Thanks. I resisted for several years, rationalizing that I had a calendar I carried, and I had all the phone numbers I needed on my cell phone. Then I took a look at what several other pastors had on their PDA's. A little over a year ago I bought a reconditioned Clie for $100, so I could find out if it were really something I was going to use before I shelled out any more money. I have it with me constantly. I have items scheduled on my calendar as far ahead as 2005, I have hundreds of entries in my address book including pictures of the members of my congregation, I load sermons and other worship service information that I am working on months in advance, plus a few books for enjoyment, not to mention a few games, and now with my new PDA I will be able to use it as my MP3. My wife finally figured out that with a calendar in her purse, one at home and one on her desk at work, no one of them had everything she was supposed to do. She saw how I sync with my computer at church, home and the PDA, and got jealous. So she is getting my old PDA for the time being. I add on a foldable keyboard (which I still need for the new unit) and don't even bother with my laptop on trips anymore.

BTW, just to keep semi on topic, I never did have a computer that used the 8 inch drive, but I still have one box with a 5 1/4 drive. The last time I used it was about a year and a half ago, when I downloaded an old program onto a 3.5 floppy for a friend. Thats when I found out that a lot of my old floppys won't even turn anymore.

[Mark Holtz]

I must be dating myself, but years ago, I recorded my programs on casette tape. PITA, but if you don't have a floppy drive, that's what you had to live with.

Ironic, though, that we still use tape for backups, albiet in a different form.

[Richard King]

I took a programming class (Fortran 4) at the University of Minnesota in about 1969 or so. The computer room was about 4,000 square feet and contained a single Burroughs mainframe with reel to reel drives and card readers. I typed my programs on cards which were then turned into and fed through the machine by the "computer operator". The first computer that I purchased was a Commodore Vic 20. I soon graduated to a Commodore 64 which probably had as much or more power than the Burroughs a the UofM. Both the Vic 20 and the 64 had cassette drives when I got them, but I graduated to a 5 1/.4" floppy eventually on the 64. I also got a Commodore 128 portable which I wrote a custom program to calculate payroll when I was the sales manager at the pro audio store I worked for. This thing had about a 4.5" screen and a built in 5 1/4" floppy. My first computer with a hard drive had an Intel 186 processor (an odd processor that was not used on many machines) and a 20 Gig HD. The drive died after about 6 months and was replaced at a cost of about $600. I think I still have that machine sitting around in storage somewhere. Now I have three computers (this one, a 500 M Dell that came with my Starband system, an 866(?)M Celeron at home, and a 1.8G Hz laptop that is with me or in my car at all times). I never thought I would have 3 computers that I could actually justify owning.

[Bogy]

This thing had about a 4.5" screen and a built in 5 1/4" floppy. My first computer with a hard drive had an Intel 186 processor (an odd processor that was not used on many machines) and a 20 Gig HD. The drive died after about 6 months and was replaced at a cost of about $600.
Richard, this has to have been a slip. :)

[Geronimo]

my 18 year old son who has been using PCs since age 3 told me has a vague memory of our first home PC. He asked me about the processor---it was a NEC V20 that was sort of an 8088 clone). When I told him it ran at 4.77 Mhz and in "Turbo" at 9.54 Mhz he sort of believed me. But when I told him that the HD was a 30 MB one he simply refused to believe me. When I informed him that at the time no OS could support anything as big as a gigabyte he pretty much went into shock.

I was afraid to tell him that people were actually impressed by that 30 MB drive in a home PC and that most people told me it was a waste of money as I would never fill anyting like that up at home and that I might actually lose files in it because it was so big (and no I never underrtood that argument either).

[Richard King]

Richard, this has to have been a slipOops... make that 20 Meg. :D

[Steve Mehs]

Kudos Bogy on the PDA purchase, I've been wanting one for some time now, but the price is a killer. I'm a dedicated Microsoft guy and have some loyalty to Compaq/HP so I want the iPaq. Looking at the latest iPaq models processor speeds are up to 400Mhz with the Intel XScale processor. The computers in my old high school are only 400Mhz Pentium IIs that were purchased brand new when I was a freshmen. It wasn't that long ago when the iPaq featured a 100Mhz Intel Strong Arm. But of coarse I’d only be satisfied with the 5555. Biometric fingerprint recognition for a PDA is too cool. Unfortunately I don’t have the $650 on me at the moment. :D But just looking back on the PDA market it’s amazing how times have changed. I still remember when 3Com spun off Palm.

[sorahl]

It is great to remember what you used to have and see where you are now.
I have lots of great memories about my computer. My first online chat with a friend, modem settings 150 bd 8, N, 1 and half duplex. The first email i got, getting computer shopper to get the bbs listings. :) hehe my first girlfriend who I met over a bbs (Ghostcomm) in Poughkeepsie and the group of us from that bbs who would get together and go to the movies. Soldering a connection in my 1571 floppy drive so that I didn't need to notch a disk to use the second side!!
The first bbs I ran out of my college dorm room with my Commodore 128, 2 1541 drives, a 1571 drive and my 1200 baud modem
Oh yeah, those were the days....

[Bogy]

I was afraid to tell him that people were actually impressed by that 30 MB drive in a home PC and that most people told me it was a waste of money as I would never fill anyting like that up at home and that I might actually lose files in it because it was so big (and no I never underrtood that argument either).
I remember looking at a hard drive for the IBM PC. There was no way I could afford it, so I don't remember exactly, but my memory is that it was a whopping 5 meg and cost about $2600, or basically the same as the PC alone. I rationalized that I wouldn't want it anyway because the HDs of the day crashed so often.

I also wondered how I would ever fill up my first 30 meg drive. Then I wondered how I would ever fill up my 340 meg HD. And of course I figured I would never fill up my 3.2 gig HD. I now have about 15 gig open on my 40 gig HD, because I have about 8 gigs of MP3s loaded on a slave drive, and am under no illusion that I couldn't fill it up very easily, especially with my digital camera. Now I'm starting to look at 250 gig drives wondering how long it will take the price to drop enough to buy one.

[Bogy]

Kudos Bogy on the PDA purchase, I've been wanting one for some time now, but the price is a killer. I'm a dedicated Microsoft guy and have some loyalty to Compaq/HP so I want the iPaq. Looking at the latest iPaq models processor speeds are up to 400Mhz with the Intel XScale processor. The computers in my old high school are only 400Mhz Pentium IIs that were purchased brand new when I was a freshmen. It wasn't that long ago when the iPaq featured a 100Mhz Intel Strong Arm. But of coarse I’d only be satisfied with the 5555. Biometric fingerprint recognition for a PDA is too cool. Unfortunately I don’t have the $650 on me at the moment. :D But just looking back on the PDA market it’s amazing how times have changed. I still remember when 3Com spun off Palm.
Steve, we all have our preferences. I like Sony, and especially since I have a Sony Cyber-Shot camera I have gone with Sony Clies since I can trade around memory sticks. I can even take pictures on the camera and them view them right in my PDA. My TJ-35 has a 200 MHz Intel MXL processor. Generally, Palm systems don't need processors that are as fast or need as much memory as the Microsoft systems. With Documents to Go I can work on Word, Powerpoint, Excel, etc. documents. If only my desktop system was as stable as my PDA. And if I could just afford a new 1 Gig memory stick. :D

[Jacob S]

I remember when I was little playing on an Aquarius computer from mattel electronics that was made in 1981. It was a keyboard that had the pc built into it and you would hook it up to a tv. There was a cassette recorder/player that was a precursor to the floppy drive (like what was in the apple IIe computers) that would come out a few years after that. It even had games that you could play on it.

I still have it and it still works. There was this slot where you put your games in that you could also put additional memory in. It was based on ''basic'' programming where you punch in 10 Print "Hello" then the next line 20 Run. It came with a booklet of codes that you could punch in that would result in a program being displayed like running characters across the screen or a functional clock or a timer running down the screen.

I even remember seeing some type of modem you could connect to a phone line but dont know where that went to. I also remember an Apple Macintosh Performa computer I had back in the mid 1990's and I got some modem with it and I was not familiar with the internet at that time and this demonstration of computers connecting together and thinking "this seems rather interesting" but was younger then.