Ozidave Posted October 30, 2004 Share Posted October 30, 2004 I was cleaning out some stored archives from day's of old when I came across these invoices and receipts.Cost of living may have gone up... But this proves PC's have gone Wayyyy Down. 03-8-93. Dos 6. $99.0026-7-93. 2 Mitsumi CD drives & Controllers (4X speed too) $760.00.28-6-93. 1 Connor 250Mb HD $530.0002-6-93. 1 tower case $240.0013-7-93. 1 386DX MoBo $198.00 (expensive because it was Fasssssssst!)29-7-93. 1 Western Digital 250Mb HD $448.0010-9-93. 1 14400 external Maestro Modem $427.00That is one **** of an expensive 'home' build I used as a BBS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havnblast Posted October 30, 2004 Share Posted October 30, 2004 oh yea - those where the days, brand new 486 was about 1500.00 -- now that is a trip down memory lane Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeber Posted October 30, 2004 Share Posted October 30, 2004 Whoa, dude! 2 drives, 500MB of storage space! Whatever did you do with all that space? More than one person could fill up in a lifetime... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dicknite Posted October 30, 2004 Share Posted October 30, 2004 Whoa, dude! 2 drives, 500MB of storage space! Whatever did you do with all that space? More than one person could fill up in a lifetime... Hehe!1983 - I was building computers for fun and profit. Just to kind of "shop the competition", I went into Radio Shack to look at a Tandy computer. It had a 20MB drive in it.I asked the salesman, "So - How big is as 20MB drive?" and he replied, "It would take 5 secretaries typing 8 hours a day a whole year to fill that drive!"My first "PC", a Kaypro PC (8086?), 768k, 10MB, Hercules Graphics, was $3,200 out the door. Then I had to buy a monitor, modem, and printer! Saved money then tho - didn't need a mouse! They didn't do much in DOS!d|:^)Dick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ozidave Posted October 30, 2004 Author Share Posted October 30, 2004 And Memory got to be a $100.00 a Meg here in Aus... I suspect it wasn't much different elsewhere. I remember buying 4x250k sticks and a B&W super vga just to run a second computer on the BBS. ****! I wasted some money on that thing... But at least I did use 'Wildcat' software. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ozidave Posted October 30, 2004 Author Share Posted October 30, 2004 Whoa, dude! 2 drives, 500MB of storage space! Whatever did you do with all that space? More than one person could fill up in a lifetime... Two lifetimes even... Yea! it's amazing stuff... NOW! you couldn't even fit a CD on it. And I actually started with a couple of 2400bps modems. Imagine down-loading an .iso with that. Probably take a couple of days? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibe98765 Posted October 31, 2004 Share Posted October 31, 2004 Remember whenLiving in this fast-paced global society of mobile phones and Hi-Speed Internet, it is easy to forget about a time when things were a lot simpler. Take a long sweet relaxing journey back in time and "Remember When" life moved a whole lot slower.http://www.thestatenislandboys.com/U_thrill_me/index.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichNRockville Posted October 31, 2004 Share Posted October 31, 2004 Not to just one up anyone, But:I started my BBS on a ibm pc with 2 floppy diskette drives which were 160K each. It was on a 300bps modem (which cost over $400). Then the huge 320K floppies came out and I was in heaven. There were ways to add an external floppy case for two more floppies for a grand total of 4 360K floppy diskette drives and my BBS was busy 24hrs a day. Running an intrepeted basic BBS.Boy oh boy was I happy to pay almost $3000 for an external case which came with a humungous 10 megabytes of disks space. I was in heaven as I just knew that I would never fill that up. My bbs was even busier. Less than 10 seconds between one caller and the next one. the machine hardly had time to reset.Then to progress, I paid over $800 for a huge 30 megabyte hard disk and eventually I upgraded to 80 gigabytes for another $800. Memory went for almost $400 for 4 megs. Now I am tired.. <G>My system eventually retired but I still have all the bills for my first IBM PC which I bought at the ibm product store in downtown Washington DC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibe98765 Posted October 31, 2004 Share Posted October 31, 2004 My first PC system in 1993 set me back $4300! That was for a 486DX (66 MHz), 16MB RAM (4 4MB chips), 500MB SCSI disk, 4MB video card, 33k modem and a 15" monitor. My HP LJ4 printer (which finally bit the dust last week) was another $1400 in 1994. In 1995 or so, I brought a 1GB SCSI disk as an upgrade. Cost was $650! Whew...But I could go back in the memory bank to 43MB? Winchester type disks on the mainframe. If I remember correctly, they had something like 15-18" platters (about 6 of them?). You manually swapped them around by grabbing a plexi-glass top, opening the drive enclosure, screwing the top onto the drive, lifting it out of the enclosure and either putting it in storage or into another enclosure. Even though the head to disk clearances were relatively use, we still had regular head crashes. And people used to smoke in the computer room then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted October 31, 2004 Share Posted October 31, 2004 My first PC system in 1993 set me back $4300! That was for a 486DX (66 MHz), 16MB RAM (4 4MB chips), 500MB SCSI disk, 4MB video card, 33k modem and a 15" monitor. My HP LJ4 printer (which finally bit the dust last week) was another $1400 in 1994. In 1995 or so, I brought a 1GB SCSI disk as an upgrade. Cost was $650! Whew...But I could go back in the memory bank to 43MB? Winchester type disks on the mainframe. If I remember correctly, they had something like 15-18" platters (about 6 of them?). You manually swapped them around by grabbing a plexi-glass top, opening the drive enclosure, screwing the top onto the drive, lifting it out of the enclosure and either putting it in storage or into another enclosure. Even though the head to disk clearances were relatively use, we still had regular head crashes. And people used to smoke in the computer room then. Yep, those were the days. My first computer I bought was in 1992, the year Windows 3.1 came out. It was a 386DX-33 with 120MB hard drive, 4MB RAM, plus 14" monitor (no sound card, no modem, heck, no CD-ROM!) Set me back $2100 Cdn. I remember paying $400 for another 4MB of RAM a year later. Ouch! I did a little better with an upgrade to a 486DX2-66 in 1994. Motherboard and CPU cost me about $400. An ATI Mach32 2MB VLB video card was $275, and 16MB of RAM set me back another $400. I found a used 1.2GB Quantum SCSI drive/525MB Archive tape drive/Adaptec 2842 VLB SCSI controller bundle for $900. A little later I broke down and bought myself a Creative Labs SB16/2x CD-ROM kit for $200 (Falcon 3 just wasn't the same with the PC speaker) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Paracelsus Posted October 31, 2004 Share Posted October 31, 2004 Jeez!! Are we gonna start this all over again? :harhar:Anybody wanna see my Wang?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teacher Posted October 31, 2004 Share Posted October 31, 2004 Sure we are. My Zenith 171 portable computer was only $2000 with a faculty discount at IU. It had 256 bytes of memory and dual floppy drives with an 8087 processor. I could use WordStar, Dbase and Lotus1-2-3 all I wanted. The year was 1982. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ozidave Posted October 31, 2004 Author Share Posted October 31, 2004 Jeez!! Are we gonna start this all over again? :harhar:Anybody wanna see my Wang??  Hi Para,I just made a statement, *Bruno* asked a question? Besides, this is about the cost of the bits n' pieces that were over-the-moon and went into making it, rather than 'buying' it complete. :'(What was the first computer you've ever owned ? The box that got you interested ?And what is the latest one you got today ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibe98765 Posted October 31, 2004 Share Posted October 31, 2004 Anybody wanna see my Wang?? No, umm, I don't think so. Suggest you best keep your wang to yourself. :'( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Paracelsus Posted November 1, 2004 Share Posted November 1, 2004 No, umm, I don't think so. Suggest you best keep your wang to yourself. OUCH!!!I'm sore enough already!! Going to bed early now.Why doesn't anyone ever want to see my Wang?? :'(It's the biggest in all Tejas :'( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nlinecomputers Posted November 1, 2004 Share Posted November 1, 2004 Let me guess. Girls used to slap you alot in High School. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
claren44 Posted November 1, 2004 Share Posted November 1, 2004 Gee, y'all make me feel so young!(Actually, I was just slow to come to computers - I was broke & living on the streets of Houston during those days )Love & Peace, Clarence Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Paracelsus Posted November 1, 2004 Share Posted November 1, 2004 Let me guess. Girls used to slap you alot in High School.You Got that Right...But at least they kept me from falling asleep in Class It's the biggest in all TejasCould be one of the oldest too! :'( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ozidave Posted November 1, 2004 Author Share Posted November 1, 2004 Take a long sweet relaxing journey back in time and "Remember When" life moved a whole lot slower.When men were made of steel and ships were made of wood... Or not back quite that far? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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