Because you asked for it, here’s my reminiscing on the life of a computer dork in the 1980s. I’ll start in 1982, the year I first got a computer.
Contrary to what’s available today, there were plenty of hardware options available to a first-time computer shopper back in 1982.
King of the heap was the Apple II. Well, it was king as far as I was concerned. I wanted an Apple II. It ran all the software I wanted, including the WordStar word processor, plus plenty of games. The basic Apple II computer sold for about $1200 back then. That was just the console, with about 16K of RAM. You used a TV set as the monitor. A cassette tape provided the mass storage.
I had barely enough money for the Apple II, but the jerk in the computer store wouldn’t sell me one.
Yes, you had to go to computer stores back then. There really were no Big Box stores, though you could probably buy an Atari 800 or other TV game consoles in Sears.
The jerk was too busy to sell me an Apple II was busy selling an old guy another computer, the Osborne. It was one of the first portable PCs, even though it was the size of a good, hard suitcase. Yet it was a complete unit, with a teensy five-inch monitor, 32KB RAM, two 180K floppy disk drives and — what was then a first then — bundled software. I believe it sold for $1600, or more if you bought more memory.
Also available in 1982 was the IBM PC, the new kid on the block. For $1400 you could get an IBM PC with 16K of RAM, no monitor, no disk drives, and use a cassette recorder as your mass storage device.
A complete IBM PC, with two 180K disk drives, 64K RAM, color monitor and graphics adapter, pushed $4000.
Yes, color graphics were extra back then. All PCs had a text mode. The Apple II did color and graphics. The IBM did with the color graphics adapter (which is where we get the acronym CGA). The Osborne and other systems did not do color or graphics, just text.
Another high-end option beyond the IBM PC and Osbone were the generic CP/M computers. CP/M was an operating system and it ran on multiple hardware platforms. A slew of CP/M machines existed, all of which could run CP/M software. For example, the IMSAI computer used in the movie War Gams was a CP/M box. Those systems were kind of expensive and a little too techy for my tastes. Plus, they didn’t have a lot of games and hardly any graphics.
A step down from the Apple II was the Commodore 64, which cost about $700 for the console. You used a TV set for the monitor and a cassette recorder for the storage. The C64 had great graphics and games, but I viewed it as a toy computer. (And I took lots of flack for that attitude.)
Off in left field were the TRS-80 computers from Radio Shack. They were good systems, but much maligned because Radio Shack was notorious for selling schlocky stuff.
Turns out, I drove to Radio Shack after the jerk in the first computer store wouldn’t sell me an Apple II. I paid $1000 for a TRS-80 Model III computer, which came with 4KB of RAM, a built-in monitor, and used a cassette recorder for storage. You can see a photo of my computer system here.
and now, you can get any one of these computers for $0-$1000+ depending on who you ask. or for original retail price of these systems, you could get a brand new mac that does more than any of the vintage computers. but the thing with new computers is that they have no unique thing about them. a dell pc is just the same as an hp pc and even macs are pc’s now. true, pc’s in aluminum boxes but still a pc. vintage computers have a little bit of charm to them because they were all unique in some way.
in one of my DOS books (which was never as good as some book that i think was called “DOS for Dummies” :D) there is an ad that you could win a brand-new 486 Multimedia PC, suggested retail value of $6,970. And for a 66MHz computer that seems way crazy, but back in 1994 (i think) that was the top-of-the-line pc and you would expect to have to pay that much. nowadays, brand new computers run in the hundred-dollar range for a netbook.
yeah, while the rest of the market has been rising, the computer market prices have been dropping.
Comment by linuxlove — July 28, 2009 @ 12:04 pm
wow i wish i could edit my comment.
for something that I paid $35, my thinkpad would have cost about $3000 brand new. of course, you can get a new laptop for that much. for a base model, the price doesn’t sound very base.
and while the computer part of a Thinkpad is like a rock, the SCREEN isn’t… i cracked mine yesterday x.x
Comment by linuxlove — July 28, 2009 @ 12:13 pm
The early laptop screens were awful. Some you couldn’t see unless the lid was angled just right. Forget about looking at the thing in sunlight. Oh, and they were all monochrome with big, blocky graphics. It was an era that is gladly passed.
Comment by admin — July 28, 2009 @ 9:12 pm