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Computers Prices

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PAUL161

PAUL161

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Think computer prices are over the top? Then you weren't around when the new Gavilan-1 was introduced! A Portable, not called a Lap Top. You wouldn't want this on your lap, but it was top shelf in 1983.
At $3900.00 +, it was supposedly a bargain! And it didn't even display color! :highly_amused: PJ

I forgot to ad, it used the new 3.5 inch floppies along with the normal 5.5s Hard drive? Whats a hard drive?

 
You got that right Mickey!
 
I recall a colleague of mine who was formerly employed by Esso Research. When we hired him, he brought his Osborne "portable" to work (very similar to Paul's picture above). It was a gift to him when he left Esso and he told us it cost 2 months pay.
Soon after, I bought a Timex-Sinclair and then rigged up an early CAD program on it.

My first non-sliderule "calculator" was a mechanical device that used a metal stylus to drag the numbers into position.
 
Nial - your friend had an Osborne! I got mine back in the early 1980s for working on my dissertation. I still have the Osborne, and it still works. Two 5.25" floppy drives (360K, double side, double density?), and a whopping 5" screen. Mouse? what's a mouse?

280px-Osborne01.jpg
 
Mine was an IBM PC Junior. I believe it cost around $1300. Then the guy says ok now you need DOS and I said what? Another $200. And it did next to nothing. But it did get me started.
 
When I bought my first computer with a hard drive in it, I thought it was really something! It even had Windows 3.1! All files had to be compressed, as the super big hard drive was only 164 MEG!! Had a 5.5 floppy drive and a 3.5 floppy drive also. Installed a processor doubler, a little more memory and I was really moving! Windows 95 came out and was on 13, 3.5 floppies, not CD yet. I still have the set of floppies, for what reason, I don't know, but maybe Gates will buy them back from me? :highly_amused: ! I just love to play with old computers and get them working again. Problem there is, the old software is getting hard to find, in some cases impossible. I still have a complete set of Microsoft's First DOS program on 5.5 floppies and the sub programs that came with it. About 15 floppies. :encouragement: PJ
 
All right, you guys started it. When I started my consulting and services business in 1978, I put together a computer to run inventory for a wholesale truck parts supplier. It had a 4MHz Z80 processor with 64K of memory. That memory card alone was $1000. For storage, I bought a dual, double sided-double density, 8 inch floppy disk drive that was another $2500. And if I remember right those 1.2MB disks were about $1 each. The only "hard drives" available at the time were those washing machine size machines with the removable disk packs made for "real" computers.
 
Anybody remember the Sinclair ZX80 computer? I had one (wish I still did)... it used your TV as the monitor, and a cassette tape as the storage device. As I remember it was programmable in BASIC.
It was a fun little and cheap learning computer.
 
While we're on the subject,

Ive got a Commodore 64 and a Multitech MPF-I/88 that any of you guys are are welcome to for the price of shipping. If anybody in SoCal wants 'em I'd be happy to drive over and hand them to you.

IMG_5364.JPG

(pic of MPF-I/88 (not mine) stolen from the web)
 
Nostalgic thread! Couldn't pony up the price for one in '76~'77 but an upstairs neighbor sold IBM 370 business computers. He would bring an IMSAI PCS-80 home and we'd "telnet" into the mainframe at his office and play a "game" similar to pong on the thing. We thought we were SierraHotel !!! Kinda hazy on details but think it was running a BSD Unix kernel.

Bayless said:
It had a 4MHz Z80 processor
Click to expand...

Bayless! I still have one NIB 4mHz Z-80 processor and the three Zylog books/manuals of specs and data it came with, left over from those days. Should fleaBay it.
 
what ... what ... did someone say Zilog?

I've still got a Timex Sinclair 1000 upstairs. Probably still works, but I don't have an "old fashioned" TV with a dipole antenna connection to plug the video into! Remember the ad gimmick: "the first computer under $100!"
 
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