The Good Old Days



  • Best Buy advertisement from September, 1996.  (not responsible for poor quality)

    (click for enlargification)

                   



  • Ah yes, the monitors with the "Ferengi ears" speakers... and Apple is still overpriced!



  • RAM Doubler? On a floppy? Wouldn't that mean you only had 1MB RAM and it was really noisy?



  •  Oh man memory lane.

     

    1.6GB drive? Can't even store 1 good quality movie on that!



  • @dhromed said:

    1.6GB drive? Can't even store 1 good quality movie on that!
     

    In my first "real programming" job, my works 486 had a 240MB drive.

    My completely wasted accumulation of molecules known as my boss had a 520MB drive. Her boss had 1.2GB.

    Given that all of us ran WFW and used them solely as an environment to run a terminal emulator (to talk to our *nix boxen), the increased disk capacity was completely wasted upon us.

    One day, we were given new Pentium-class machines (only P75s, so one step up from the 486s). The point of the faster processors meant we - as developers - could compile code faster, but given that all compilation took place on the servers the only difference to me was the 14" monitor being replaced by a 15" (could run at 1024 x 768) and the screen refresh rate improved. Oh, and a larger disk, most of which was still wasted since it stored very little, but being newer (and faster) the workstation booted a little quicker.

    Big waste of money for what we actually used it for. Yes, it was a local government job.



  •  8x CD-ROM... oh man I remember when these were a luxury item. I was still in school at the time and my dad finally decided to buy me a Pentium to replace out ancient 286. However the budget could only cover the basic package so I had to fork over all of my own money to get a CD-ROM. These days they're practically paying you to buy a 1 million x CD/DVD-RW/Stone-engraving drive.

    "What's that, 20 euros each? Sure give me two, I could use a cup holder in the car"

    Also is it too late to buy a tape drive? 800Mbs of sequential access data sounds awesome.

     



  • @DOA said:

     8x CD-ROM... oh man I remember when these were a luxury item. I was still in school at the time and my dad finally decided to buy me a Pentium to replace out ancient 286. However the budget could only cover the basic package so I had to fork over all of my own money to get a CD-ROM. These days they're practically paying you to buy a 1 million x CD/DVD-RW/Stone-engraving drive.

    "What's that, 20 euros each? Sure give me two, I could use a cup holder in the car"

    Also is it too late to buy a tape drive? 800Mbs of sequential access data sounds awesome.

     

    Got a couple of Zip drives in the other room if you're interested.  And roughly thirty blank discs to use in them.

    (Not that the last part's all that important; you can still buy the discs at OfficeMax.)

     



  • @da Doctah said:

    Got a couple of Zip drives in the other room if you're interested.  And roughly thirty blank discs to use in them.

    I have an original parallel port 100MB zip drive still, but only 10 disks. It never got the click of death. I used it with my 386 - which only had an 80MB HDD so using the disk that came with it more than doubled my storage capacity! I remember it was stable at the fastest "nibble" transfer rate. Still not as fast as true bidi but fast enough to run ZipSlack.



  • @Zemm said:

    I remember it was stable at the fastest "nibble" transfer rate. Still not as fast as true bidi but fast enough to run ZipSlack.

    Quick, someone get the smelling salts, he's having another episode!



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Quick, someone get the smelling salts, he's having another episode!
     

    Turn that music down and get off my lawn!



  • I can't wait to upgrade to 16MB of RAM. 



  • @da Doctah said:

    Got a couple of Zip drives in the other room if you're interested.  And roughly thirty blank discs to use in them.
    In the early 90's I bought a unit made by Sysquest that was their version of the Zip drive.  I bought it because the disks were higher capacity (120 MB vs Zip's 100) and they made a unit that I could mount internally in my computer -- sort of like a  jumbo floppy drive.  Unfortunately, Syquest's quality control was complete shit.  On average, 25% of the Syquest disks failed after a few uses and another 25% didn't work at all. @belgariontheking said:
    I can't wait to upgrade to 16MB of RAM. 
    Me too.  I drove a long distance to a small computer shop because they were advertising 8 MB of RAM at the fantastic low price of only $159.



  • Oh, please let me play Topper!!!

    Here are scans of the "64er" magazine, Jan 1988:

    I still have my Star LC24-10 ... or is that box in the garage a LC24-200? Never mind. Hey look, 100 disks (3.5"), and even "Double Density" (720k?), for only DM 250,-!

    Note for international readers: with the € the conversion was 1 € ~ 2DM, IIRC. (No, I didn't use DM at that time. Go figure.)



  • @El_Heffe said:

    I drove a long distance to a small computer shop because they were advertising 8 MB of RAM at the fantastic low price of only $159.
    I once bought some memory modules at a CompUSA and it took eighteen months and at least a dozen phone calls to get the mail-in rebate, by which time the cost of still larger memories had gone down to less than the amount of the rebate.

    The guy I dealt with at the fulfillment center was named Simms.



  • 16 years on and they still advertise computers alongside the toasters and refrigerators.

    Then again, 16 years on our refrigerators now closer resemble the pentiums on that front page than the glorified iceboxes of years past.



  • @Delve said:

    16 years on and they still advertise computers alongside the toasters and refrigerators. .
    A computer as an appliance has been a dream of many people for a very long time.  I remember Radio Shack ads from long ago showing a woman (your stereotypical "housewife") in the kitchen with a computer sitting on the counter right next to the toaster.


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