How things have changed!
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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!
I honestly don't remember the hardware specifics at this point. That was over 20 years ago. :)
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 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.It was de riguer for engineering students to have a slide rule prior to the days of calculators.
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It was de riguer for engineering students to have a slide rule prior to the days of calculators.
My senior-year Chemistry teacher mentioned that they had Versilogs, large slide rules that they'd hang from their belts. I think one could psychologize about that... :)
Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. -
I honestly don't remember the hardware specifics at this point. That was over 20 years ago. :)
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
And, there was all that emotional trauma! :laugh:
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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.
dandy72 wrote:
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 $2000 video cards. This is an area where "more money than brains" comes to mind.
I bought an AMD Ryzen 6900xt when I did my pc for 990€ (around 900$), it was the third best casd in that moment. And... it will remain in my pc until it gets broken. My primary reason to buy it? I could afford it and it was easier to get one from AMD shop than the 6800XT (was my first selection). Extern shops were minimum 175% (up to 350%) of the official price and I didn't want to pay that (although I actually could)
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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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 am a few weeks older than the IBM System/360 announcement. When I was eight or nine, my father gave an introductory programming course in the Weizman Institute (their mainframe was a 360) and took me along. My first program was in Fortran on punched cards. It read pairs of numbers and output their product. True to form, it had a bug in it. :)
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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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
Mike Hankey wrote:
Buys the latest gear; PC and video cards
Well, some people change cars every year, and you can hardly make a worst investment. There are worse ways to waste money on than PCs and video cards; they're still cheap, relatively speaking...
Mike Hankey wrote:
Puts nothing but the OS and game on his PC
I see nothing wrong with that. I do have a machine I consider to be my dedicated gaming rig - there's literally nothing on it but the OS and games. Heck, I chat with other online players over Discord, and that is running on a separate computer.
Mike Hankey wrote:
Every 3 months he fresh load OS and games
Now that, I do question. Since he uses his PC for nothing else, it's gotta be staying in a relatively clean state.
Mike Hankey wrote:
He's retired and that's all he does is game most of the day.
Whatever floats his boat. I've always figured, when I retire, I'll probably keep both coding and gaming...but I suspect I'll do more of the former than the latter.
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Mike Hankey wrote:
Buys the latest gear; PC and video cards
Well, some people change cars every year, and you can hardly make a worst investment. There are worse ways to waste money on than PCs and video cards; they're still cheap, relatively speaking...
Mike Hankey wrote:
Puts nothing but the OS and game on his PC
I see nothing wrong with that. I do have a machine I consider to be my dedicated gaming rig - there's literally nothing on it but the OS and games. Heck, I chat with other online players over Discord, and that is running on a separate computer.
Mike Hankey wrote:
Every 3 months he fresh load OS and games
Now that, I do question. Since he uses his PC for nothing else, it's gotta be staying in a relatively clean state.
Mike Hankey wrote:
He's retired and that's all he does is game most of the day.
Whatever floats his boat. I've always figured, when I retire, I'll probably keep both coding and gaming...but I suspect I'll do more of the former than the latter.
I thought when I retired I would slow down, but at 75 I'm working as hard as I did when I was working. If you slow down, you die!
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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I thought when I retired I would slow down, but at 75 I'm working as hard as I did when I was working. If you slow down, you die!
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
Right now, I code during the day for work, and spend my evenings gaming to wind down. I don't expect my schedule to change much; it's just that after retirement, my "work hours" will be (ideally) spent on my own little pet projects. Things I've been meaning to work on for years, but would never pay the bills. At some point in time, I wrote plenty of little side projects in my spare time, and coding for both work *and* a hobby just lead to a burnout. I often find myself longing to work on my pet projects again...but not if that's what I'm gonna do day in, day out.
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Right now, I code during the day for work, and spend my evenings gaming to wind down. I don't expect my schedule to change much; it's just that after retirement, my "work hours" will be (ideally) spent on my own little pet projects. Things I've been meaning to work on for years, but would never pay the bills. At some point in time, I wrote plenty of little side projects in my spare time, and coding for both work *and* a hobby just lead to a burnout. I often find myself longing to work on my pet projects again...but not if that's what I'm gonna do day in, day out.
During the hotter months, I live in FL I work outside about 1-2 hours a day. We've spent 3 years totally remodeling an old house that needed a lot of work. We have a large wooded lot and right now I have about 3 large trees down and 4 more that need be brought down before next hurricane. They have to be cut, split and hauled to a place where an elderly lady, that heats her house with wood can come and load them in her truck. When I'm not outside I read, a lot, code and am learning to play piano. And as the weather here is starting to get cooler, the roles will reverse spending more time outside trying to get everything done. It never ends!
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
