How things have changed!
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I'm not sure if prices are really indicative of how computers have changed, but here goes. I remember paying around $700 for 64 *megabytes* of RAM some time after I started working fulltime. I recently paid $200 for 64 *gigabytes* for my NUC. I remember paying over $900 for an HP scanner (with a SCSI interface). The last scanner I bought was $60. Actually, no, the last scanner I bought was integrated in a $150 scanner/printer combo. When I started off, spending $2000 for a PC was the norm. Now I have a hard time justifying half of that. The one consistent thing is video cards however. I've never paid more than a few hundred dollars for them, yet somehow there's still a market for $2000 video cards. This is an area where "more money than brains" comes to mind.
I remember when I bought my first 486 back in the day, and specified a Tseng labs ET4000 based video card, because it was then the mutt's nuts for performance.
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This should be an amusing thread. How have computers changed during your life? --- In 1985, I purchased a $35 USD accelerator for my Zenith Z-100, which bumped the processor speed from 4.67 MHz to 7.5 MHz. It was an amazing change to the PC!!! [I originally put "Hz", which was pointed out as incorrect.] That same year it cost $150 to bump that PC from 384 KB RAM up to 1 MB. After I got the PC back, only 1 software package (I think it was Turbo Pascal) could use more than 640 KB. :laugh: In 1989 I installed a 40 MB HD in our office server, quadrupling the storage space. We were excited, as the price had just dropped to $750 USD. Previously that same HD had cost nearly $1,500. In 1999 I installed a new HD (can't remember the size offhand), and I did the math. Going by the per-MB cost, at 1989 prices the new HD would have cost $750,000. And at 1999 prices, the 40 MB HD would have cost about $0.02. In 2009 I did the same thing -- at 1989 prices, the 2009 HD would have cost $45,000,000 ... and Excel didn't have enough precision to calculate the 2009 price of a 40 MB HD ... :laugh:
In the fall of 1986 my parents purchased the brand new Apple ][gs for somewhere in the ballpark of $2500 after a RAM upgrade It had 1MB of RAM, a 3.5 inch floppy, a 5.25 inch floppy, color screen with a mouse and gui, and ran at up to a blistering 2MHz. It's main selling points were the better than EGA but worse than VGA graphics, and actually nice 16-bit ensoniq sound hardware. You could get apple speakers for it made by bose but we didn't. Eventually we got a 40MB hard drive for it (2 20MB partitions because that's all GS/OS and ProDOS could handle. I don't know what that set my parents back, but it replaced the power supply in the PC, which should tell you how "intended" a hard drive was for that machine. Today my desktop cost in the same ballpark. I have a i5-13600K CPU at 5.1GHz, 32GB of RAM, 6TB of fast 990 Pro NVMe storage, and all the fixins. I bought it about 2 years ago. I don't know how many orders of magnitude more powerful it is, even breaking down the speed metrics and comparing them because cycle of my current CPU is like many cycles of the old 65C816 in that apple.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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I started as a consultant to the US Air Force. I recall a classified disk pack (DEC/VAX, I think) being "de-classified". The USAF was diligent about destroying anything that might even remotely contain classified information. Two airmen carried the pack out onto the tarmac and literally pounded it flat with 12 lb sledgehammers. The remains were thrown in an incinerator.
This reminds me of something I read on usenet, long ago. The thread was about how to effectively decommision hard drives. One poster related how he had attended some event, and casual conversation of professionals turned to this subject. There were various solutions, including shotguns, large magnets and power saws. One of the participants said something like "I'm with the NSA, and we put our old drives in the N-Test holes, before detonation." They all laughed. Then they realized the NSA guy was serious.
"A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants" Chuckles the clown
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I had forgotten all all about AS/400 And then you had to comment. The last AIX and Pains systems I worked on was an AS/400 with a failing hard drive. My job was to export the database. into Access. I have LASTING EMOTIONAL DAMAGE from that experience.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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This should be an amusing thread. How have computers changed during your life? --- In 1985, I purchased a $35 USD accelerator for my Zenith Z-100, which bumped the processor speed from 4.67 MHz to 7.5 MHz. It was an amazing change to the PC!!! [I originally put "Hz", which was pointed out as incorrect.] That same year it cost $150 to bump that PC from 384 KB RAM up to 1 MB. After I got the PC back, only 1 software package (I think it was Turbo Pascal) could use more than 640 KB. :laugh: In 1989 I installed a 40 MB HD in our office server, quadrupling the storage space. We were excited, as the price had just dropped to $750 USD. Previously that same HD had cost nearly $1,500. In 1999 I installed a new HD (can't remember the size offhand), and I did the math. Going by the per-MB cost, at 1989 prices the new HD would have cost $750,000. And at 1999 prices, the 40 MB HD would have cost about $0.02. In 2009 I did the same thing -- at 1989 prices, the 2009 HD would have cost $45,000,000 ... and Excel didn't have enough precision to calculate the 2009 price of a 40 MB HD ... :laugh:
This brought to mind the great advances in power consumption of older and newer devices. In the mid 1970's I was in college and had a co-op job working for IBM in their Philadelphia data center. It was downtown located midway up one of the high rises. They did education and system support and had the latest IBM 370 mainframe computer. The mainframe consisted of 4 refrigerator sized (think of a double door large modern model) components and ran from standard building 3 phase power. In a cost cutting move IBM management decided that since the data center only supported education it really did not need the latest and greatest. So they replaced it with a very old IBM 360 model. This model required it's own dedicated motor/generator to supply the filtered power to the mainframe. The motor/generator was huge (roughly 2 meters long by a meter and a half high). It looked like it belonged in the engine room of a large ship. The only problem was to spin the motor/generator up to the proper speed to generate stable power required it would look like a major short circuit to the building power. The operations manager went through the start up draw and matched it against the building's power and figured it would be fine. However, the building engineer felt that the safety trips in the building would stutter and not supply enough power to get the generator up to speed. The engineer had a work around. They could disable the safety trips for the few seconds that the mass surge of power was needed. On the day they were going to try this I got a chance to go to the building's power management core (located in that hidden floor in the middle of the building). The fuses in this part of the building were scary, huge. The fuse was as long as your arm (tip of fingers to elbow) and as thick as your leg. There was a special circuit breaker in front of the fuse that was the problem. It was there to protect the fuse (the engineer said they cost thousands of dollars to replace). That circuit breaker was the problem. It would set and then reset as the motor/generator pulled power to get started. Thus starving the motor/generator and preventing it from ever reaching it's intended speed. So even though the draw was within the safety range of the fuse, the circuit breaker would prevent the motor/generator from spinning up. The work-around was to jam a broom against the circuit breaker reset preventing it from tripping. The engineer handed the broom to my ops manager and said the responsibility was all his. He jammed the broom agains
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This should be an amusing thread. How have computers changed during your life? --- In 1985, I purchased a $35 USD accelerator for my Zenith Z-100, which bumped the processor speed from 4.67 MHz to 7.5 MHz. It was an amazing change to the PC!!! [I originally put "Hz", which was pointed out as incorrect.] That same year it cost $150 to bump that PC from 384 KB RAM up to 1 MB. After I got the PC back, only 1 software package (I think it was Turbo Pascal) could use more than 640 KB. :laugh: In 1989 I installed a 40 MB HD in our office server, quadrupling the storage space. We were excited, as the price had just dropped to $750 USD. Previously that same HD had cost nearly $1,500. In 1999 I installed a new HD (can't remember the size offhand), and I did the math. Going by the per-MB cost, at 1989 prices the new HD would have cost $750,000. And at 1999 prices, the 40 MB HD would have cost about $0.02. In 2009 I did the same thing -- at 1989 prices, the 2009 HD would have cost $45,000,000 ... and Excel didn't have enough precision to calculate the 2009 price of a 40 MB HD ... :laugh:
I cannot help but notice that we have many Yorkshiremen in the lounge :laugh: And, not to be outdone, my first floating point computing device in high school was a sliding rule. It took about 5 seconds to do a multiplication, hence processor speed = 0.2Hz. Like every kid of that era, for integer arithmetic I used an abacus in primary school but I don't remember much about it.
Mircea
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First computer experience 1965. Had to wind it up every night. :)
>64 It’s weird being the same age as old people. Live every day like it is your last; one day, it will be.
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I cannot help but notice that we have many Yorkshiremen in the lounge :laugh: And, not to be outdone, my first floating point computing device in high school was a sliding rule. It took about 5 seconds to do a multiplication, hence processor speed = 0.2Hz. Like every kid of that era, for integer arithmetic I used an abacus in primary school but I don't remember much about it.
Mircea
I also had a slide rule and was reasonably proficient with it, often getting an extra significant digit by doing that part of the calculation in my head. In 1973, it got replaced by an HP-45 calculator.
Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. -
First computer experience 1965. Had to wind it up every night. :)
>64 It’s weird being the same age as old people. Live every day like it is your last; one day, it will be.
My first experience was in 1970, when I got access to the Board of Education's IBM 1130 and wrote some Fortran programs.
Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. -
This should be an amusing thread. How have computers changed during your life? --- In 1985, I purchased a $35 USD accelerator for my Zenith Z-100, which bumped the processor speed from 4.67 MHz to 7.5 MHz. It was an amazing change to the PC!!! [I originally put "Hz", which was pointed out as incorrect.] That same year it cost $150 to bump that PC from 384 KB RAM up to 1 MB. After I got the PC back, only 1 software package (I think it was Turbo Pascal) could use more than 640 KB. :laugh: In 1989 I installed a 40 MB HD in our office server, quadrupling the storage space. We were excited, as the price had just dropped to $750 USD. Previously that same HD had cost nearly $1,500. In 1999 I installed a new HD (can't remember the size offhand), and I did the math. Going by the per-MB cost, at 1989 prices the new HD would have cost $750,000. And at 1999 prices, the 40 MB HD would have cost about $0.02. In 2009 I did the same thing -- at 1989 prices, the 2009 HD would have cost $45,000,000 ... and Excel didn't have enough precision to calculate the 2009 price of a 40 MB HD ... :laugh:
My first real computer (not counting the TI/99 from 1983?) was a Powermac 6100 from around 1994. Actually, I had two identical cpus, with scsi peripherals (CD, printer) and a single 13'' monitor. IIRC each CPU had 16MB of RAM and each had a 500MB disk. I wound up putting both drives into one of the cpus and later paying almost $300 to add 64MB of RAM. Games ran much better, but the OS was total crap (System 7.5.x) and crashed constantly. My first Windows PC was an HP Pavilion with a 350MHz AMD chip, a 40MB HDD, 32MB RAM, and a screaming 56Kb modem. I added a SuperDisk drive for around $200. The monitor was a 15'' Sony Trinitron costing another $200. This was my first development computer when I went back to uni in '98. For graduation 2 years later, I got my first laptop, a Gateway Solo 9300 with a huge 15.7'' screen, a 750MHz Pentium III, and 64MB RAM. Unfortunately, it came with the Millenium OS which was total crap. After a few too many crashes during development (lost work) I bought a copy of Win2K for it. I used Win2K as my OS of choice for almost 10 years, basically skipping XP altogether. Happy Days! :)
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse "Hope is contagious"
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I also had a slide rule and was reasonably proficient with it, often getting an extra significant digit by doing that part of the calculation in my head. In 1973, it got replaced by an HP-45 calculator.
Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.I've got a Sears scientific calculator in 1974[^] :)
Mircea
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This should be an amusing thread. How have computers changed during your life? --- In 1985, I purchased a $35 USD accelerator for my Zenith Z-100, which bumped the processor speed from 4.67 MHz to 7.5 MHz. It was an amazing change to the PC!!! [I originally put "Hz", which was pointed out as incorrect.] That same year it cost $150 to bump that PC from 384 KB RAM up to 1 MB. After I got the PC back, only 1 software package (I think it was Turbo Pascal) could use more than 640 KB. :laugh: In 1989 I installed a 40 MB HD in our office server, quadrupling the storage space. We were excited, as the price had just dropped to $750 USD. Previously that same HD had cost nearly $1,500. In 1999 I installed a new HD (can't remember the size offhand), and I did the math. Going by the per-MB cost, at 1989 prices the new HD would have cost $750,000. And at 1999 prices, the 40 MB HD would have cost about $0.02. In 2009 I did the same thing -- at 1989 prices, the 2009 HD would have cost $45,000,000 ... and Excel didn't have enough precision to calculate the 2009 price of a 40 MB HD ... :laugh:
BryanFazekas wrote:
[I do mean Hz, not MHz or GHz]
You must be mistaken. I guarantee you that the CPU clock speed was not 7.5 cycles per second (Hertz). It must have been MHz.
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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BryanFazekas wrote:
[I do mean Hz, not MHz or GHz]
You must be mistaken. I guarantee you that the CPU clock speed was not 7.5 cycles per second (Hertz). It must have been MHz.
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
You are correct. I updated the original post. You may be correct. This was 40 years ago ... memory is a bit fuzzy.
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This should be an amusing thread. How have computers changed during your life? --- In 1985, I purchased a $35 USD accelerator for my Zenith Z-100, which bumped the processor speed from 4.67 MHz to 7.5 MHz. It was an amazing change to the PC!!! [I originally put "Hz", which was pointed out as incorrect.] That same year it cost $150 to bump that PC from 384 KB RAM up to 1 MB. After I got the PC back, only 1 software package (I think it was Turbo Pascal) could use more than 640 KB. :laugh: In 1989 I installed a 40 MB HD in our office server, quadrupling the storage space. We were excited, as the price had just dropped to $750 USD. Previously that same HD had cost nearly $1,500. In 1999 I installed a new HD (can't remember the size offhand), and I did the math. Going by the per-MB cost, at 1989 prices the new HD would have cost $750,000. And at 1999 prices, the 40 MB HD would have cost about $0.02. In 2009 I did the same thing -- at 1989 prices, the 2009 HD would have cost $45,000,000 ... and Excel didn't have enough precision to calculate the 2009 price of a 40 MB HD ... :laugh:
Back in the 90's I remember wasting $300 on a Zip drive. The lure of storing 100 MB on each cartridge was too much. It seems like the cartridges were relatively expensive as well. Of course about a year later they came out with CD Writers built into the PC's already. Brent Hoskisson
Brent
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I started that same year. We had to "reboot" first thing every morning, although in those days the term was "feed the master" (as in Master Program).
"Cold start"? On core storage machines, with proper programming, you could just hit the start button. Why did I read this thread, I already felt old. :)
>64 It’s weird being the same age as old people. Live every day like it is your last; one day, it will be.
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Well obviously those are the people who buy these cards. But you can still be a gamer with a $400 video card. There is a point of diminishing returns.
I have a friend that; - Buys the latest gear; PC and video cards - Puts nothing but the OS and game on his PC - Every 3 months he fresh load OS and games He's retired and that's all he does is game most of the day.
A home without books is a body without soul. Marcus Tullius Cicero PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - Release Version 1.4.0 (Many new features) JaxCoder.com Latest Article: EventAggregator
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My first real computer (not counting the TI/99 from 1983?) was a Powermac 6100 from around 1994. Actually, I had two identical cpus, with scsi peripherals (CD, printer) and a single 13'' monitor. IIRC each CPU had 16MB of RAM and each had a 500MB disk. I wound up putting both drives into one of the cpus and later paying almost $300 to add 64MB of RAM. Games ran much better, but the OS was total crap (System 7.5.x) and crashed constantly. My first Windows PC was an HP Pavilion with a 350MHz AMD chip, a 40MB HDD, 32MB RAM, and a screaming 56Kb modem. I added a SuperDisk drive for around $200. The monitor was a 15'' Sony Trinitron costing another $200. This was my first development computer when I went back to uni in '98. For graduation 2 years later, I got my first laptop, a Gateway Solo 9300 with a huge 15.7'' screen, a 750MHz Pentium III, and 64MB RAM. Unfortunately, it came with the Millenium OS which was total crap. After a few too many crashes during development (lost work) I bought a copy of Win2K for it. I used Win2K as my OS of choice for almost 10 years, basically skipping XP altogether. Happy Days! :)
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse "Hope is contagious"
The first computer I ever owned was the TI/99-4A! My first PC was a 386SX with 2 MB of RAM!
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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The first computer I ever owned was the TI/99-4A! My first PC was a 386SX with 2 MB of RAM!
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
:thumbsup: Yeah, mine was the 4a as well, bought as a Christmas gift for my two brothers and I. All they wanted to do was play games on it. (Tombstone, Micro-surgeon, Alpiner, Congo Bongo, and Pirate Adventure are the ones I remember) I was more interested in figuring out how to make it do something useful...like my geometry homework. Learning BASIC helped a lot when I started my CS degree a couple of years later. I graduated 14 years later! :laugh:
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse "Hope is contagious"
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My first experience was in 1970, when I got access to the Board of Education's IBM 1130 and wrote some Fortran programs.
Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. -
I had forgotten all all about AS/400 And then you had to comment. The last AIX and Pains systems I worked on was an AS/400 with a failing hard drive. My job was to export the database. into Access. I have LASTING EMOTIONAL DAMAGE from that experience.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
How many hard drives did you have on that AS/400? I had 5 drives on the one I used, the disk storage was RAIDed. When we had to replace the supposedly failing drives (IBM sent me a note saying that the drives weren’t up to their standard of 1 million hours MTBF so they were going to replace them), all that the service engineer (SE) did was to shut down one drive at a time, remove that drive, put in the new drive, power it up, and wait 20 minutes for data to be re-created on the new disk from the RAID information from the other disks. Not knowing how trivial the process was, I had scheduled the SE to come in at 12 midnight on a Sunday which I figured was when the computing load would be the lowest. I could have saved myself the trouble of staying up that night and could have scheduled the maintenance for Monday morning 10 AM!
