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How Much was a CDC 1604 in the 60's?

Posted by Cliff on from the costs-of-computers-in-the-past dept.

An Oxymoran asks: "Greetings Slashdot. A colleague, that is sadly preparing an obituary for a late, great scientist, recently posed the following question: How much did a Control Data Corporation (CDC; Cray predecessor) 1604 cost in the late 60's? Apparently the 1604's controller computer, the 160, cost ~$100K. However, I have failed to turn up a price for the 1604. I would be highly appreciative of any estimates of 1604 prices from the 60's that the collective Slashdot genius can unearth. Thank you."

13 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. Yes.... by krymsin01 · · Score: 2, Informative

    One Miiiiiillion dollars!

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    stuff
    1. Re:Yes.... by Compuser · · Score: 2, Funny

      Judging by the other comments in this thread, the parent should be modded "Informative".

  2. It was $750,000 by christopherfinke · · Score: 4, Informative

    This list (Google cache) has it at $750,000 in 1961.

    1. Re:It was $750,000 by GoRK · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Incedentally, various inflation calculators put $750,000 1961 dollars at a little under or over $4.5MM of today's money.

  3. A few references by toastyman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This claims it's $10m, but it sounds a bit... boasty..

    This quotes $34,000/mo.

    Maybe a post to comp.sys.cdc will get you some answers?

  4. Do I hear 1.2 million? by azuroff · · Score: 2, Interesting

    this list has it at $1,229,575, or $34,000/month rental.

  5. that brings up another question by xutopia · · Score: 3, Interesting

    how powerful was it compared to today's desktops?

    1. Re:that brings up another question by Bob+Cat+-+NYMPHS · · Score: 2, Funny

      It was around 1/1,000,000 as 'powerful', using various metrics.

      About 36 years since the late 60's, that's 24 'Moore's Law' periods (18 mos.), 2^24 == 16M, and you're running windows, so we divide by 16 to get one million.

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  6. I found an old TV transcript that should help... by Texas+Rose+on+Lava+L · · Score: 4, Funny

    Don't pay ten million dollars or more for a computer from IBM when...

    The CDC 1604 can be yours for five easy payments of just $299,999! Just call the number on your screen!

    BUT WAIT!

    If you order the revolutionary new CDC 1604 within the next seven minutes, we'll knock one full payment off the purchase price! That's right, this revolutionary new computing technology can be yours for just four easy payments of just $299,999! Call now, operators are standing by!

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    Rank Presidents by th

  7. CDC Cyber by sakusha · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well now I feel really old. The first mainframe I ever got an account on was a descendant of the 1604, an early CDC Cyber. Our university's system operators were so proud that they'd rescued this monster CPU from a scrap heap at another university. They got it for free, it was so old and underpowered by the mid 1970s that nobody wanted it, even though it was perfectly usable and in working condition. So they fired it up and gave out free timeshare accounts to students. It made sense to them, it cost nothing to set up and very little to maintain, it ran BASIC and FORTRAN, so they let the students use it freely. In those days, a student account on our IBM 360s was hideously expensive, you got something like $50 worth of CPU cycles, when I finally was permitted to use the 360 (CS class students only) I burned through those $50 of play money in 2 weeks, I offered to pay $50 cash for more CPU time but they wouldn't do it. So I went back to the Cyber.

  8. The full CDC 6600 was $4,500,000. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 3, Informative


    I remember the CDC 6600 as being $4,500,000 when it was newly introduced. So, the $1 million listed is only for the CPU module. An actual system required maybe 22 "peripheral processors" to handle IO and printing. Then there were hard drives, tape drives, the main console, and card readers.

    The CDC 6600 had a 60-bit word. Memory amounts were expressed in octal. Memory was extremely expensive. If the 6600 had 100,000 octal bytes of memory your organization was rich.

  9. Re:I found an old TV transcript that should help.. by blankmange · · Score: 2, Funny
    but you forgot:

    and it WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE!

    Just look at these people who bought one - don't you want to be like them?
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  10. Pre-announcement for NetBSD for CDC1604 by thomasdz · · Score: 2, Funny

    This slashdot thread has reminded me of the good old days of hacking on the CDC 1604. So I took the current release of NetBSD for the VAX and hacked it up to run on the CDC 1604
    I then compiled Apache, loaded up some web pages that I copied off the Internet, and put up a site. You can see it at www.cnn.com

    Moderate this "-1 April" hahahahaha
    Thomas

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