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I had a ZX81.  The extension pack to expand it to a dizzying 16kb RAM cost almost as much as the original machine, and you had to plug it into a TV  :)
by Sassafras on Tue May 26th, 2009 at 02:00:30 PM EST
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I remember in the early to mid eighties, my employer brought a couple of hard drives for me to fit into a PC clone for testing. £1500 for each 40Mb drive.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Tue May 26th, 2009 at 02:07:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]
The place where I also learned the valuable life lesson, never shout at the woman who's sleeping with the boss. It's just not good for job longevity.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Tue May 26th, 2009 at 02:09:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]
It's even worse for job longevity if you shout at her while she's doing it...

"Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Tue May 26th, 2009 at 02:33:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]
were you the boss?

notes from no w here
by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot dotty communists) on Wed May 27th, 2009 at 05:30:54 AM EST
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HOW TO ORDER AN IBM PERSONAL COMPUTER, Columbia University, 1984: 10 MB fixed disk drive, $1281.00; 10MB expansion unit,  $2037.00 (for XT).

The computer itself, IBM PC XT ( 28KB Memory, one 10MB drive) would have cost you $3776.00. These are academic discount prices...

by gk (g k quattro due due sette "at" gmail.com) on Tue May 26th, 2009 at 02:14:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]
and multiply by about 3 to convert to present day dollars.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Tue May 26th, 2009 at 02:19:43 PM EST
[ Parent ]
We had XTs in the office where I started work in 1989.  We used them to run Sage and Lotus 123, which we pretty much used as an addendum to the schedules created by hand.

In 1991, my mid-level firm having being swallowed by one of the Big 6, everything was computerised, including audit.  But the partners decided to buy six suitcase-sized laptops to be shared between around 200 people. We had to work by hand during the day, then do shifts in the evening, copying our work onto the laptops, each machine visiting as many as three people's homes in a single night. And we couldn't do much about it, because it was 1991 and so many of our other colleagues had already lost their jobs.

I did find it entertaining, though, that I was expected to audit our clients' computer systems for security when every computer the partnership owned had the same (obvious) logon and password.  When one of the precious portables went missing, the assumption was that someone had tired of the house-to-house late shifts and decided to keep one for their exclusive use. The memos became ever more threatening, culminating in the statement that all the portables had an internal log and that Computer Services Would Know Who Had Been Using It. Um...not without a secret inbuilt retinal scanner, they wouldn't...

by Sassafras on Tue May 26th, 2009 at 03:00:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I do remember paying 1000 French Francs for a 1 Mb RAM extension for a Mac II, and was even happy to find two of them...!

In those time I preferred the Sharp PC 1500 to the ZX 81 variants, as it had a nice (but very small) plotter with 4 colored pens ! (I still have it somewhere with the first portable Mac, a very heavy folding SE)...

"What can I do, What can I write, Against the fall of Night". A.E. Housman

by margouillat (hemidactylus(dot)frenatus(at)wanadoo(dot)fr) on Tue May 26th, 2009 at 02:22:40 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Oh my. So cheap in those days.

I was selling a pre-MS/DOS CP/M system in '82. Saw my first 5 Megabyte hard disk that we sold for 10K...or was it a 10 Meg for 5K? Anyway, it was a lot for a little.


Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.

Frank Delaney ~ Ireland

by siegestate (siegestate or beyondwarispeace.com) on Tue May 26th, 2009 at 04:44:00 PM EST
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Did you always remember to mount a scratch monkey?

:-)

In 1979 a couple of us put a Pertec fixed hard drive onto an Apple.  One whole meg!  (Gah-zang! Gosh, boy-oh-boy.)  

by ATinNM on Tue May 26th, 2009 at 10:22:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]
yes but you couldn't play frisbee with them unlike 8" single sided floppies.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Wed May 27th, 2009 at 11:33:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]
... a Timex Sinclair ... first totally closet compatible computing device I ever owned.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue May 26th, 2009 at 04:19:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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