How much would you pay for a PC with 128KB RAM, and no hard disk?
In today’s money (inflation adjusted)
This an ad from Personal Computer World (UK) from 1985
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Hey, I recognize you from this comment! You flipped that switch so many decades ago, ruining everything I had worked so hard for. I’ll always remember.
Those lost 50KB of work will forever be etched into my mind. Quite literally: the second I get my hands on a 30TB neurolink you bet your goddam ass I’m making a 50KB text file with your name on repeat, so that I’ll always hear your name echo in my thoughts. “u/[email protected] flipped my surge protector’s switch”, for x in range infinity
We actually had one of those Macintosh 128 K machines in the lower left. My dad got two external floppy drives for it. The first lesson I remember learning, that I still remember is when the dialog box asks:
{Disk Read Error, [Abort][Retry][Initialize]?}
Initialize is Never ever ever the correct option.
Assuming “Initialize” reformatted the disk and preped it to be used fresh?
Correct, and that could be very problematic depending on the disc I had grabbed
My grandfather’s glorious Olivetti proudest pc-1,paid 11million lirae (about 6.000€ euros) with an 8mhz CPU and well over 512kB of ram!
(from Wikipedia, the house burned down in 2001)
The conversion is wrong. £1500 in 1985 is £5814.92($7,359.45) today.
I just googled the conversion of the price from 1985 to today based on inflation and then googled the exchange rate between the current value in GBP to USD.
I used 3 of those. That Compaq was about as “portable” as a suitcase stuffed with a corpse. Great machine though when you needed it!
I miss the green and black screen though.
Psh, $5700 and they don’t even come with a 4090.
Seriously, though, it’s no wonder why businesses had most of computers in the 80s; these companies were ripping people the hell off and getting away with it. Nearly $6 grand and you don’t even get a hard drive, nor a reasonable amount of RAM. Give me a fucking break.
Apricot? So there were 2 pc makers with connection to fruit? Or Macintosh is not yet Apple then?
Macintosh was always Apple. Apricot may have been trying to ride on the coattails of Apple’s popularity (I remember the computers but I’m too lazy to look it up).
I don’t recall apricot and olivetti. But the other I have vague memories especially the Macintosh one. Compaq doesn’t count as it is still existing.
Olivetti, from Italy, was pretty famous in Europe as a typewriter manufacturer. So it wasn’t much of a surprise my father’s first PC (and the first PC compatible I could use) was Olivetti PCS 386SX, circa 1992.
Turns out Olivetti is surprisingly important in computer history too. Olivetti made Programma 101, which was the first programmable desk computer/calculator, way back in 1965. If NASA bought a bunch of these, I guess it was serious shit.
Thank you! This is interesting. I’d go to a Google/wikipedia/youtube rabbit hole now
Interestingly mac is the only one with a mouse.
