'80 Mbytes of storage for under $12k!' and other ad favorites through the years

ComputerWorld ^ | June 14, 2007 | Sharon Machlis

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

It's rare for us to spend an hour-long staff meeting in nonstop laughter.

But that's pretty much what happened when we gathered to go through old print issues of Computerworld as part of our 40th anniversary celebration.

The original idea of hauling those Computerworld issues out of storage was to look at important stories and people throughout the years. But we couldn't get over the ads!

"80 Mbytes of storage for less than $12,000!" boasts one. In another, a woman in hot pants touts a modem that's, yes, "maybe even sexy." There's even a campy B movie celebrity hawking development software.

It was too much fun not to share. So after one of the best meetings ever, we bring you 10 of our favorite, most entertaining IT ads from four decades of Computerworld. If you'd like, you can try to guess what year the ad ran before clicking the image to find out. Click through, and you'll also find out the top Computerworld stories from the issue, as well as a larger version of the image.


Such a deal

You can purchase this 80MB disk system for less than $12k -- and even better, 300MB for under $20k!

Not very irresistible today, but apparently a bargain back when this was published. So good, in fact, that prices were valid only for resellers buying at least 40 systems.

Have an idea when this might have been published? We'll offer this headline hint from the front page of the same issue: "Mainframes Not Always a Must, Citibank Officer Advises Users."

Click to see a larger version of the ad, what year it ran and more top news from that issue.

What the heck is electronic mail?

That's the question posed in this Honeywell ad, which explains: "Simply put, it means high-speed information transportation.

"One of the most advanced methods is terminals talking to one another.

"Your mailbox is the terminal on your desk. Punch a key and today's correspondence and messages are displayed instantly."

Who knew?

Want to hazard a guess when this one published? Headline hint from the issue: "Happy [10th] Birthday, Mr. Chip."

Click to see a larger version of the ad, what year it ran and more top news from that issue.

It's 'versatile, dependable, compatible and maybe even sexy'

These modems are "all performers," this ad not-so-subtly boasts -- from 1,200 bit/sec. all the way up to 4,800 bit/sec.

What year do you think an advertisement would be using a model in hot pants? Headline hints: "Univac 9700 Offers Compatibility, Price"; "Technology Makes Move Out of Core City Feasible."

Click to see a larger version of the ad, what year it ran and more top news from that issue.

You can see words on the screen!

The software touted here runs "on most Z80/8080/8085 microcomputers with CP/M, 48K and terminal with addressable cursor." Not only do you get all the features of a high-priced word processing system, but "with WordStar, you have a true screen image of what your printout will look like before you print it! With WordStar, you'll erase, insert, delete and move entire blocks of copy."

Cool indeed!

Click to see a larger image of just what WordStar WYSIWYG looks like.

Could you be suffering from ... COBOLitis?

"You say you don't know your process from your loop? Or your CASE from your GOTO? No doubt, you're suffering from COBOLitis," says this ad from the folks at Yourdon Press.

Click through to find out the cure, as well as the year this one ran.

Your very own mainframe!

"Everyone needs to use the computer? With The Personal Mainframe, up to 512 users can work interactively at their own terminals," says an ad for this system that touts computing availability beyond the glass-enclosed data center.

How do you know when you need this system? "When people are waiting in line for their applications. When some people need a decision-making tool and others need a number-cruncher."

See larger image and more information.

What 'mobile' used to mean

Well before the era of handhelds or even laptops came "briefcase portability." This system features interactive CRT terminal, control unit, keyboard, acoustic coupler and 5-in. video monitor. Any idea what year "totable" meant "able to be lugged around in a briefcase?" Headline hint: "IBM Decries Justice's Use of FBI as 'Coercive'" (part of the IBM antitrust trial).

See larger image and more information.

Remember these?

Every office used to have them, but we haven't seen one in years. It's called a "typewriter." And in this ad, readers are told that a "little ball turns an ordinary Selectric typewriter into the only bilingual input device in the world.

"So, instead of a big, expensive data preparation center and the expensive personnel that go with it, all you need is a couple of Selectrics (which you may already have), a few DF-2 elements and our Optical Page Reader."

I'm not sure the current generation of students would even recognize the Selectric type ball in the picture.

Publishing year headline hint: "13 Models Beef Up Burroughs 700s."

Click to see a larger version of the ad, what year it ran and more top headlines from that issue.

It's small and light at only 11+ lbs.

"MultiSpeed is multi-talented. It's small. Light. And gives you the option of running at a clock speed of either 9.54 or 4.77 MHz," boasts this ad from NEC showing what a laptop of its day was like. It weighed in at 11.2 lb. with 640K of memory, dual 720K drives and five built-in programs. Do you remember what year this was state of the art? Headline hint: "OS/2 to bind PC to hosts, leap 640K wall."

Click to see a larger version of the ad, what year it ran and more top news from that issue.

Mistress of the Dark

Remember Elvira, Mistress of the Dark? Besides appearing on TV in features like Elvira's Movie Macabre Halloween Special, Elvira also invited Computerworld readers to "cut through paper-based CASE [computer-aided software engineering] methods with LBMS" software.

"The scariest thing about CASE is the several hundred pounds of books that land on your desk and for which you've paid fifteen gazillion dollars, when you buy off on a CASE development methodology," she writes.

Can you guess what year Elvira appeared in this Computerworld ad? Headline hint: "IBM delays notebook arrival in U.S."

Click to see a larger version of the ad, what year it ran and more top headlines from that issue.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

Ahhhh, memories!

[dfwgator]

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Our first hard drive was a 3.8 megabyte drum.
It had 17 read/write heads that were in contact with the drum and if it was bumped before it stopped, it was ruined.

[martin_fierro]

[johnny7]

LMAO...

[johnny7]

LOL! That typeface in the headline is straight out’a the ‘doper-era’... circa 1972-1978... Antique Olive I believe?

[Clam Digger]

All is needs is some orange shag carpet and macrame things hanging from the ceiling.

[qam1]

Xer Ping

Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.

Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.

[jdm]

Imagine walking into Starbucks later and sitting down at a table and opening up one of these. Imagine the looks!

[johnny7]

All is needs is some orange shag carpet and macrame things hanging from the ceiling.

...and an 'e-z wider' ad running next to it.

[johnny7]

[Red in Blue PA]

Remember the old TRS-80 computer?

Several thousand dollars and it really didn’t do a whole lot!

[Tijeras_Slim]

Ahhh the Trash 80. Remember the Timex Sinclair?

[ßuddaßudd]

I have a 1987 Compaq Portable LANalyzer for sale.

[Kevmo]

B4L8r

[T.Smith]

We had a Sinclair. I little black thing, wasn’t it? We followed that up with a VIC 20 and later a Commodore 64.

[lesser_satan]

I had one. There was very little software for it, and had to write your own a lot. I couldn’t afford a floppy drive, so I had a cassette drive for it, and the tapes would always get corrupted or otherwise f$%ked up and you’d lose whatever you’d spent hours figuring out and typing in.

[SunkenCiv]

JS&A Products that Think? I picked up some, uh, discontinued products through Sugarman.

ComputerWorld’s writer might have been a little more humble about this if she’d reviewed the ads for the many, many computer magazines which have vanished in the past 25 years.

[SunkenCiv]

Oh, duh, silly me, it was DAK... I got an Olivetti inkjet printer from DAK, it had glass ink tubes (very easy to change, pretty small capacity) with what looked like the spring from a pen inside, if memory serves. The print quality was kinda mediocre, not least because it had no descenders.

[NMR Guy]

Re: Coleco Adam

I had one of those. Unfortunately.

It was all my parents could afford to buy. Even at my very young age, I could tell it was junk. My folks would get mad when I printed out reports for school late at night, because the super noisy printer sounded like a machine gun in slow motion, and it would wake them up.

[So Cal Rocket]

Osborne 1

On this page:

Osborne 1

Computer Encyclopedia

 

Home > Library > Science > Computer Encyclopedia

Osborne I

The first portable computer, developed by Adam Osborne and introduced in 1981. Floppy disk based with 64K of memory, it used the CP/M operating system and a modified version of the WordStar word processor that would display only 40 characters at a time across its tiny 4.5" CRT. It cost $1,795, which was considerably inexpensive for a computer of that era. Weighing in at nearly 30 pounds and requiring AC power, the Osborne was really more "transportable" than a true portable.

The Osborne I

We might chuckle at this today compared to our ultra-sleek laptops, but, for its time, the Osborne I was breakthrough technology. Adam Osborne started a revolution. (Equipment courtesy of Alfred J. Young.)

[johnny7]

Even at my very young age, I could tell it was junk.

LMAO... that sounds like something I would say!

Some people just knew instinctively that these early personal PC's were more of future possibilities... rather than working solutions for the present. The Mac Classic was merely a glimpse into this future as well. Low memory... software limitations... slow... postscript still a couple of years away... they were nothing more than finicky, high-tech toys.

[uglybiker]

[jjm2111]

My dad has been in the comnputer business since there was one. He started working on mainframes that had vacuum tubes and now (pushing 70) is designing websites.

We had an Apple 2+ in the early eighties. It cost him $4000 is in like 1984 money. I thought booting up was so cool. I could play Red Storm Rising on it.The next was the 8086 clone. My 7th grade teacher said I couldn’t turn in reports done on Word. I actually printed out reports and then transposed them by writing them.

Now my Dad play Morrowind and writes scripts for it. On an online forum someone was boasting that, at 35, he was the oldest guy posting on the forum. My dad wrote in that he was 68.

[Army Air Corps]

I love these ads; they bring back so many fond memories.

A friend of mine once used an Atari 1040ST. He still has it and occasionally he boots it. He used to code his own games and other bits of software on it...in junior high.

[NerdDad]

My first computer.

Cost me about $2100 TTL. Built an RS-232 interface to tie it to a Royal electronic typewriter that cost me $1600

That package made me the first administrator in the Air Force to put a computer on a desktop at the squadron level.

I learned Wordstar, Supercalc and DB2 on the fly. It took me about 4 hours to set up and print the first Officer Effectiveness Report (OER). It paid for itself when it took 5 minutes each the next 4 times that I had to reprint it after the various colonels made changes.

Wound up learning BASIC on that thing and using it to fill out all the personnel forms the AF required.

The really cool part was that it and the Trash 80 that followed it so completely dazzled the inspection teams that came in that my office never actually got inspected the rest of the time I was in the AF.

[NerdDad]

I can’t believe you guys are saying such bad things about the Trash 80 and Timex.

After I wore out my Osborne, the TRS-80 Model 3 was a huge upgrade for me. And especially with that behemoth daisy wheel printer that doubled the speed of the Royal typewriter I had lashed to the Osborne.

After I got out of the AF, I went to work for a whiz kid programmer/accountant. We wrote a football statistics program in BASIC for the Timex Sinclair. We used it to provide near real time statistics for the radio broadcasts of the local high school football games. I say near real time because we had to wait for that POS thermal printer to print.

I loved doing that. It gave me a free pass to the press box for every game including playoffs.

[VOA]

Thanks for this thread.

It provoked me to finally Google something I’d heard from an old
geek that worked at UCLA about an early computer he fought with...
turns out the acronym he used was common knowlege.

IBM “CADET” = “Can’t Add, Doesn’t Even Try”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1620

[Malsua]

I love this stuff!!

I was a purchaser for Inacom/Valcom (all defunct) back in 92. I was buying 4mb simms for $150/each and couldn’t keep them in stock.

I recall when the first 486/33 showed up in the shop. We all stared in awe. ROFL. I recall it cost about 2 grand at the time.

[VOA]

Sunday-evening bump

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

This is the first computer I ever purchased with my own money.

Ten years later, I had moved on to (comparatively) much better PCs. I gave the Jr away three times, and got it back three times. I finally ended up tossing it in the dumpster (don't tell anyone).

[jdm]

Looks like binoculars!