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To: Red Badger
When I managed a computer retail store in 1980 in Boston we had MIT engineers pop by telling us about designs for computers with 1 gigabyte capacity.

Had a good laugh as we were selling 64k ram business systems for $6,000.

3 posted on 12/23/2008 6:10:18 AM PST by AU72
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To: AU72
Had a good laugh as we were selling 64k ram business systems for $6,000.

My company had one of those............

6 posted on 12/23/2008 6:12:17 AM PST by Red Badger (I was sad because I had no shoes to throw, until I met a reporter who had no feet.....)
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To: AU72

Amazing, isn’t it?

Around the time you were managing the store, I was hired to program a computer controlled (CNC) machine tool. The company had spent literally millions on this machine and the 10 MB hard drive on the machine was it’s pride and joy.

The entire computer (with hard drive) was housed in it’s own air-conditioned walk in cabinet. The hard drive was belt-driven, and if the machine was down for a while the hard drive would throw it’s belt upon reboot. I had to go into the cabinet and fix the belt whenever the machine was cold!


13 posted on 12/23/2008 6:18:10 AM PST by RetroSexual
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To: AU72

As I recall, my original 1984 IBM PC came with 256K. I paid about $250 hard earned bucks to add a 256K expansion card. That got me up to 512K, some of which I would carve off for a “virtual disk” that I would use to load up Lotus 123. We were strictly text mode in those days but Lotus 123 was a remarkable program for it’s time. It was small and it was fast even on my ancient IBM.


15 posted on 12/23/2008 6:19:38 AM PST by InterceptPoint
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To: AU72
Had a good laugh as we were selling 64k ram business systems for $6,000.

"within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them."

Those were the days

17 posted on 12/23/2008 6:20:58 AM PST by Oztrich Boy (Kill the English their concept of individual rights might undermine the power of our beloved tyrants)
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To: AU72
First computer system I worked on had 32k memory, only 16k available for program space. Had a 10M disk drive. It was housed in a huge box measuring 5’h x 6’d x 4’w, with a cyclops display and toggle-switch input. Those were the days.
28 posted on 12/23/2008 6:31:11 AM PST by devane617 (...And to the Republic For Which It Stood...)
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To: AU72
remember this?


42 posted on 12/23/2008 7:43:34 AM PST by mylife (The Roar Of The Masses Could Be Farts)
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To: AU72

Around that time I was working for a company that manufactured 40Mb (Not Gb) hard disk drive units that were the size of a kitchen dishwasher. The 12” disk platters were removable; they were in a caddy that fit on top of the unit.


55 posted on 12/23/2008 8:35:58 AM PST by shorty_harris
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