When 30MB just won't do ....

[Lukeyson]

For the fellow geeks, a little laugh from yesteryear

[pcman]

hardcore i remember my brother paying 500bux for a 200meg drive and $500 for a 8x cd burner

[Scott]

Note the qty purchase.

[Cam]

heh, noice. I still got a 6mb stick of ram sitting here, gonna sell it to the museum one day, hahahaha

[onfire]

Anyone remember those big gaming machines they put out in about 1996. A big mother of a thing, spray painted on the side, with something like 32mb ram.

[Iggypoppin']

Hehe, my iPhone has more memory than this lol

[XAGSV8]

I still have four 30pin 1mb sticks of RAM that I bought for my 486DX2. I can't bring my self to get rid of it as I remember paying $200 for it (keeping in mind $200 was a lot more money back then). My familys 386 cost around $3000 and that was without a sound card and CD-ROM.

[uranium_death]

Originally Posted by Iggypoppin'

Hehe, my iPhone has more memory than this lol

Yeah, but a lot of younger people laugh about it, but what some don't understand was that a computer with a HDD of 40mb was damn good.

It's one of those things that if you didn't have it, you'll never appreciate the pleasure it gave.
My Mum loves black and white TV and movies. I personally cannot watch them. The reason, as above.

In 1990 our 286 came with a whopping 1 meg of RAM, 40mb HDD, PC speaker, 14 inch VGA monitor (that's right! VGA - many computers were still EGA or worse, CGA back then (and a few monochrome too!)), a Witty Mouse (should have been '************' Mouse), and both a 5.25 and 3.5 inch floppy disk drives. It cost almost $3500.

I play games from that era almost more than I do games from the current era.

As I said, it is laughable now, but unless you grew up with it, it is hard to appreciate just how big 80mb was at the time.

Now, this computer cost me $1200 to build (not including the monitor, which I paid 319 for a year earlier(Samsung 940B)), containing an Asus P5Q-Pro, Q6600 CPU, Asus 4870 GPU, half a terrabyte (I don't need that much!) of HDD, and 4GB of DDR2.

It's good times have changed, but predecessors should never be forgotten or taken for granted because without them, we would not have what we have today.

[burnz]

i remember the quatum 1 gig drive for a low low $12,000

[uranium_death]

Originally Posted by burnz

i remember the quatum 1 gig drive for a low low $12,000

Wow...that must have been early 90s...

In 1995, we got a Pentium 90. Came with a cream-in-your-undies 1.2gb HDD, and 1MB Diamond Stealth video card. It was so exciting. I could finally play Mortal Kombat 1 and 2 on the computer!

[Maggot]

A c64 (in kb that is.. not meg).. had amongst other things a sky atlas programs that if you run it now in an emulator.. still predicts sun up/down/planets/eclipses and so on, based on your position on the earth.

It also had some pretty good games.

With a total memory less than command.com alone from the 486 days.

[Lukeyson]

i remember back in 1993 the old man bought a 2x CD ROM for the high spec 386SX 16mhz machine with 72mb hdd, and that alone was like $700.
And he increased it from 2MB ram to 4MB, and that was hundreds of dollars, cant remember now.

It is amazing at the rate this technology expands

[uranium_death]

Originally Posted by Maggot

A c64 (in kb that is.. not meg).. had amongst other things a sky atlas programs that if you run it now in an emulator.. still predicts sun up/down/planets/eclipses and so on, based on your position on the earth.

It also had some pretty good games.

With a total memory less than command.com alone from the 486 days.

The Commodore 64 is the best selling computer ever.
Yes, there are more PCs, but almost every one is different.

My cousin had a Commodore 128, and that was like, 'whoa'.
We were stuck with a Commodore 64, but we loved it anyway. We sold it in 1991 because with the PC, we were not using it anymore.

From games, I love Wizball. Spy Hunter was a bit of fun too, as was Parallax. Green Beret was hard.

[Maggot]

^^ Raid on bungelling bay from Broaderband s/w (who might even still be around), and Impossible Mission (showing my age there!)

But of course.. it was Doom that was the big deal in games.. when you finally upgraded your AT case from a 386 to a 486 and could run DOOM properly, and spent the next 3 months doing so!

[Franco Cozzo]

I remember our main PC we got built in 1999:

Pentium III 450mhz
128mb Ram
20GB HDD
3DFX Voodoo Banshee 16mb graphics
17" CRT VGA monitor

Then I remember, holy crap that was only 11 years ago, you compare 11 years ago to today, hard drives are pushing 2 terrabytes.

[XR Martin]

Originally Posted by uranium_death

The Commodore 64 is the best selling computer ever.
Yes, there are more PCs, but almost every one is different.

My cousin had a Commodore 128, and that was like, 'whoa'.
We were stuck with a Commodore 64, but we loved it anyway. We sold it in 1991 because with the PC, we were not using it anymore.

From games, I love Wizball. Spy Hunter was a bit of fun too, as was Parallax. Green Beret was hard.

Err PS2 has sold five times more than the C64

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by XR6 Martin

Err PS2 has sold five times more than the C64

PS2 is a game console though, not a PC.

[XR Martin]

[Romulus]

Check out the price

[pauljh74]

If you go to the MSY store in Malvern - last time I was there he still had the poster up for the Voodoo2 graphics card - which would be 1997 vintage. You'd think he'd update the posters more often.

[XR Martin]

Originally Posted by GT Falcon

Check out the price

I think a new Laser was about that price back then.

[onfire]

We had one of these bad boys back in the late 1980s/early 90s. Remember this was in an era when having a personal computer wasn't what it is today. So having a machine almost a decade old, wasn't out of the ordinary.

The IBM JX
--
Twin 720kB 3.5" diskette drives
Wireless infra-red keyboard
16-colour monitor
Stackable expansion
PC-DOS 2.11 and Advanced BASIC



We had the black model. And quite the machine it was.

I remember my parents paying $3000 for our first " good " computer is 1996. An IBM 686 clone, 120mhz, 16mb ram, 6xCDROM.. big deal. 15" Screen, printer, the works for it's day. Came with Encarta 1996, Dangerous Creatures, Works. Windows95... and a collection of classic "Shareware", Doom, DoomII, Duke Nuken3D, Commander Keen, etc...

I think the silly thing " broke down " every few months. It was still a time, when things were patchy for some reason, and every one you knew was either picking up their computer, having it looked at or getting it repaired.

[56L]

Originally Posted by uranium_death

The Commodore 64 is the best selling computer ever.
Yes, there are more PCs, but almost every one is different.

My cousin had a Commodore 128, and that was like, 'whoa'.
We were stuck with a Commodore 64, but we loved it anyway. We sold it in 1991 because with the PC, we were not using it anymore.

From games, I love Wizball. Spy Hunter was a bit of fun too, as was Parallax. Green Beret was hard.

I had C64 but i was stuck with a cassette drive ,half an hour to load a game and usually failed just before loading was finished

[uranium_death]

Originally Posted by pauljh74

If you go to the MSY store in Malvern - last time I was there he still had the poster up for the Voodoo2 graphics card - which would be 1997 vintage. You'd think he'd update the posters more often.

We had 'Cyber' in Glen Waverley. I remember that poster. The Voodoo2...WOW!

I remember back in 1991 when we got our sound blaster. That was AMAZING. Going from beeps and boops to proper sound...aww man...that was absolutely mind-blowing. One of the biggest leaps in computing for me personally.

Yeah, HDDs get bigger, more RAM etc. but going from PC speaker to Sound Blaster was a QUANTUM leap!

[GUTLES]

My first computer was an XT, Monochrome moniter, no Hard drive, just a 5 1/4" Disk Drive, no Mouse.. Then upgraded to a 386 with Soundblaster & thought it was so cool when Speech came into games.. Makes me feel really old & I'm only 29.

[Riksta]

For those who love the Commodore 64 - http://www.ccs64.com/

I run it on my rig, love it. Got a bunch of games for it too.

I used to have a couple of C64's as well as my 128D that I used to use all the time, old school rocks, unfortunately my parents took the liberty of "disposing" of them when I moved out of home ten years ago, and left them in my old cupboard at their place due to space being a premium in my flat.

Anybody interested in all this stuff I strongly recommend watching a movie called "The Pirates Of Silicon Valley", all about the rise of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and their respective companies. Great film (trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEyrivrjAuU )

And now, just for fun:






Also, http://www.old-computers.com/news/default.asp is an awesome website to relive some memories.

[pauljh74]

Originally Posted by Riksta

The geek centrefold of the month 30 years ago

[uranium_death]

Originally Posted by pauljh74

The geek centrefold of the month 30 years ago

Yep, every orthodontist was eager to get some headgear on that stud!

[Spudz27]

I remember my dad getting a 486DX with all the fruit, he got it wholesale through Ipex and it still cost $4,500. I remember playing Where in the World is carmen Sandiego, Return to Zork, Doom 1 and 2, Wolfenstein 3D and Wing Commander.

[Bluefreak]

My 286 had a turbo button, the jump to ~24Mhz was insane...!!! 128k of ram, 40Mb HDD, dot matrix printer, VGA monitor, keyboard, no mouse, 5¼ & 3½" floppy drives...

Oh how I loved DOS Shell...