Slashdot Mirror
1981 Personal Computer Catalog
edibobb writes "I just fired up my scanner and uploaded the 35-page 1981 (+/- 1 year) personal computer catalog from American Small Business Computers. 16K RAM for $22; 10 megabyte hard drive, 5 meg fixed and 5 removeable, with 14-inch platters; 25-character per second printer. Things have changed a bit since then!"
One thing I notice is that 20+ years ago alot more high tech development seemed to have been happening all over the USA, instead of being highly concentrated in just a few places as seems to be the case now. Printers from Florida? Word Processors from Oklahoma? I remember reading the the original MOS chips were manufactured in PA in the 1970s! If I bought a printer today and the box said that it was manufactured anywhere other than Taiwan or China, let alone Florida or Oklahoma, I'd be shocked!
I don't see what's so special, it's just like taking the tour inside NASA.
- Sherman
would imply that this is duplication and distribution of copyrighted material without the knowledge, consent, or license of the copyright holder.
What does this imply about the intersection of copyright law and natural rights?
Those guys in those suits. Did we really dress like that? Fuck I'm old.....
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Q.
Insert Signature Here
In this picture which one do you think is the compsci geek and which one is in league with the devil (aka the Marketing guy)?
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
If you click on any of the images from the site that he has mirrored, you get the goatse.cx photo. Parent poster is a retarded child.
Yes, I'm quoting Bill Gates. It won't happen again. But it's relevant and interesting:
"No one will need more than 637 kb of memory for a personal computer." (SaidWhat)
(early 1970s)
I suspect that was actually from later than 1981.
In 1980, I spent $269 for 16k RAM for my TRS-80.
That was 4116s, too. I can't believe I spent nearly an order of magnitude too much, since I watched prices in 80-Micro and Byte like a hawk.
My (ahem) memory could be failing, but I think this may have been more recent than 1981...
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
I'm not upgrading my memory until it drops to a buck per K, a few months from now.
Parent is a troll, Page 27 is the infamous hello.jpg
Watching it die. Didn't finish the index, so I decided to let it load one image. 33% and it seems to be decreasing exponentially.
funny munging
The phone number given is now the phone number for Upperspace. They make CAD software.
What do you think? 1970s Pr0n stars or computer salesmen? You be the judge!
Amazing, appearantly he can switch the goatse redirection on and off. It's currently off.
Things have changed a bit since then!
Yeah, the Slashdot effect hadn't been invented yet.
Me thinks he is hosting his site on some of that very same hardware from the catalogs. The site is /.ed with only 5 comments, this might be some kind of record.
/. insurance
BTW thanks for the mirror, quick thinking.
I think I will start selling
I really wanted one of those Corvus drives about that time. You could hook your Apple ][ up to them, several simultaneously, in fact. They functioned like a rudimentary network. If I coulda had a whole 10 *MB*... that would have been like having 70(!) simultaneous 143K floppy disks worth. The warez board I would have run....
That remind me, I should pick up a few more drives, and finish off my home Terabyte...
You did all that ... and then posted it on /. ?
... you have a bigger set (or more bandwidth) than me!
I will say
A desire to cause pain to one's server, primarily though the Slashdot linking of an article that consists of nothing but large .jpg images. This condition should be treated immediately with extensive psychiatric care (the glowing and smoking remains of the server can be hosed down once the heat dies down enough to allow approach).
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
I'll take it down if he wants me to, of course, but I thought it would help.
Your reality is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. - Baron Munchausen
To me, what is even more striking than the change in computer technology is the change in marketing! Everytime I see an early 80s advertisement, I just want to laugh at the naivete. Is this presentism, or have modern ads really become that much more compelling?
n 1980, I spent $269 for 16k RAM for my TRS-80.
:)
Ugh, that's way worse than me first populating my Apple II 1mb RAM card at about $100 per 128k with those silly bank of 8 chips. I was forever bending those little feet. I almost got a woody when Macs with SIMMS came along.
No threat of some lawsuit company charging you $699 for innocently using a nifty free OS.
Virus checker? Who needs it.
No DRM either
The gear shown in this catalog is the only equipment that current Corel products will run flawlessly on.
i had one of these, with 4K of memory... i remember programming john carmack's game of life in assembly language on that one, the 6509 instruction set... geez...
trs-80 color computer
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I found an old Fry's Electronics San Jose Mercury News ad section in a box of old papers at my father-in-law's house once a couple of moths ago. As a joke I replaced the ad in that day's newspaper with it. It was funny seeing his reaction later that evening when he browsed to the Fry's section to check out the day's deals as he normally does. It took a little while before he realized what was going on. Fry's ads from 1989 look almost identical to those of today, but the 386's listed for $2500 and dot matrix printers for $500 eventually tipped him off to the joke.
It's a stupid story, but I thought it was funny.
Holy crap, people actually paid more to use credit cards back then? People don't even carry cash anymore. I wonder how freaked out people would be now-a-days if I told them I was adding 3% to their purchase.
Twitter.com/TrentonHyatt
Things have changed a bit since then!
SOME OF US DO NOT HAVE THE FANCY MONEY TO SPEND ON 300 BAUD MODEMS AND EGA SCREENS AND HAVE TO MAKE DO WITH WHAT WE HAVE GOT. I RECENTLY SAVED UP TEN BUCKS TO BUY A 32K EXPANSION PACK FOR MY COMMODORE PET. IT IS NOT PRETTY BUT IT WORKS.
BEFORE YOU ASK HOW I AM ON THE ARPANET, I AM ACCESSING VIA PACKET RADIO SERVICE. MY NEAREST REPEATER IS 25 MILES AWAY AND THEN THE NEXT REPEATER ON HAS A FOURTEEN POINT FOUR KILOBIT MODEM CONNECTION TO THE ARPANET. I WAS SENT THIS MAIL BY A FRIEND OF A FRIEND WHO HAS WINDOWS AND HAVE READ IT AND AM WRITING THIS REPLY ON MY COMMODORE PET USING KA9Q AND PINE.
BEST REGARDS AND 73S
PETER COOPER
STATION WS47X
Oh my Gawd!!The hair!!Noo!!!
Parent is indeed a troll. Shot of goatse man instead of catalog page. (Blurred for your protection) It appears he is rotating the goatse man. Please mod down parent. Seems as though someone has way too much time on their hands and absolutely no life.
Has any of the mods actually LOOKED at the mirror site? Picture by picture? For instance picture #22 (catalog22.jpg)?
Did anyone else notice how incredibly detailed the specifications for these devices were in the catalogue. I mean these days a floppy drive listing rarely exceeds 2 sentences.
If you don't have the bandwidth, don't submit it.
Advice: on VPS providers
Thanks to the Slashdot effect, you get to see the catalog at 1981 speeds!!!
Catalog19.jpg on the skittlebrau mirror was "wholly" unexpected....
I remember when they sold for $15,000+
200 ns! 16K modules.. easy to install! those were the days.
I still have a bunch of old Apple magazines from about the
same error. Computers were a lot more fun then. People
spent a lot more time hacking hardware rather than figuring out why the OS just bsod again.. oh well
You think that's advanced technology, eh? You should come to my place sometime and check out my ENIAC. You have to be the 1337est of the '1337 to operate this thing. No hard drive. No mouse. No graphics... hell, there ain't even a CLI for cryin' out loud! (Real Programmers don't need no stinkin' user interface.) To enter commands into this baby, you gotta connect hundreds upon hundreds of wires, kind of like they did in the old telephone switchboards, where a human operator connected your call.
And best of all, this computer does it all.
- Want to multiply two numbers in just 3 milliseconds? Done.
- Want security even the likes of OpenBSD can't beat? Done.
The designers of this system knew what they were doing. The inability to store a program means that this system CANNOT get a virus, ever, period. Of course, then Von Neumann had to come along and invent stored programs, and the next thing you know, Outlook automatically executes email attachments...I think his server would have had the same likelihood of surviving if it was using that sort of hardware after that hit....
I don't care what anyone says... Computer nostalgia is coolio, y0...
Thanks for sharing!
do() || do_not();
FWIW - they are beta testing the latest. :-)
Hey, it's the price list from the Apple on-line store!
is also being slashdotted as it is now always busy...I wonder how fast slashdot would kill a fax machines toner.
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. Add Bunny to your signature
(> <) to help him achieve world domination.
So... what would you expect the 6509 to be used for? It didn't have the math instructions of the 6809, but it (and the 6510) did have certain useful features when it came to making "personal computers" of the day.
it looks like the webhost is actually running the hardware from the catalogue
You tried your best, & you failed miserably,
The lesson is:
Never Try
is that on their company backgroung page they actually 'fess up to service problems and mistakes as their company grew. It's hard to imagine a company - even a startup - doing that in these current days.
So if you were to buy 1 gig at those prices it would cost: $1,048,576.
Prices sure have come down huh?
The pictures are loading about as fast as they would have from a BBS in 1981!
why, it's a dying server. mmm... plastic-y
That's why I hated losing the contents of my storage locker. I had a big collection of Radio Shack catalogs, as well a Beagle Bros. catalogs.(1) Anyone remember the pocket computers?
(1) Byte's with the GOOD covers. Books on the PDP.
Ahhh, the good old days, when men were men, and computers weighed alot.
I remember printing pages of BASIC source code with one of these things. At 25cps I could usually type faster than this thing count print.
I once reprogramming the horizontal and vertical motion rates and printing lots and lots of periods to print really ugly bitmap images.
as opposed to the catalog of scandalous corruptions that we have to live with today. Computer memory prices go up? Computer device prices should always be going down in comparison to what you get. F*ck the cartels.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
They have?
I don't know about the rest of you, but I've still got a terminal from '81 still up and working within arms reach of me. Poor thing doesn't even know vt100, fortunately some OSes still have qvt in their termcap (most don't
I've got a new Tandy Color Computer 80 with monitor in my closet (new in box, only opened and used once!). (I can also get a hold of one that is still in mint condition, outer box hasn't even been opened.
If it wasn't for the multi-GHz computer I'm tying on, it would still be 1981 around here...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
... For only $699!*
*This post not intended to give Darl any ideas.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
The eye!
This sig no verb.
That "Pro/Writer" printer was one I had for my Atari back in the 80s.
:)
It's made by C.Itoh in Japan. It's originally the C.Itoh 8510A , it's also known as the Apple Imagewriter.
Of course, Japan itself has moved a lot of its production to cheaper Asian countries by now.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
Microsoft stock in 1985! :)
"We even have computers that can fit inside a single room!"
seriously though, I wonder what would happen if you were to call Epson tech support about a problem with your TRS-80 and the MX-70 printer.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cate gory=4610&item=4127896097
Yes, I'm the one selling it of course. I know nothing about it, but it's been sitting in my closet for a zillion years. Looks pretty complete to me. Go ahead, it's nostalgia!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
when I was young we had to signal our computer orders (usally replacement beads for the abacus) with damp blankets using smoke signals.
And we liked it.
-pyrrho
Slighty off topic, but related:
the classic computer magazine archive at http://www.atarimagazines.com/ has the text from some issues of Antic, STart, and Creative Computing magazines.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
.. for people who don't have enough sense to manage their money.
I have had a credit card since I was 18, I charge over $1000 on my cards a month.. I buy everything on credit card, including pay my bills. This way I maximize the free "points" my credit card gives me.
Guess how much I have paid in finance charges the past 6 years? I would say a max of 25 dollars *total*??? ( and that was only due to purposeful "letting it ride" for a few weeks since I was on vacation ).
50 dollars in finances for well over 600 dollars in rewards.
Seriously, credit cards are only "the devil" to people who have no will power. Just because I have thousands worth of credit in my pocket, doesn't mean I am about to go buy a car on my visa.
Not to mention if you charge something and you break it or it is stolen in the first 3 months, you can usually get a free replacement.. or if you get ripped off you can contest the charges. Try that with cash.
The credit card compaines got on them about it. Declared if you didn't offer credit for same as cash pricing, they'd yank your verification system so you couldn't take cards anymore. There are actually several ongoing lawsuits about this (companies claiming this an unfair practice).
Better yet, nobody knew what the blue screen of death was, as the screens were green on darker green/black.
Since the average guy has to run the spam filter, virus scanner, Service Pack 12, pop-up blocker and spy-ware removal tools, his new Dell runs about the same today as those did. Why did we have to go from 4.77 Mhz to > 3000 Mhz and and not see near 1000 fold increase in snappyness? Because of all the freakin' 3l337 haxor d00d, because-I-can-spammer's, Gaim a**holes, MS programming school of buffer mangement & X10 snakeoil salesmen.
Somewhere in my parent's house is a 1990 issue of Computer Shopper with the world's only 4GB hard drive at the time (by IBM). price: $20,000
I kept that around just to look back at times like this.
"Yes, but does it run Linux?"
"Bill Gates said 640K ought to be enough for everyone." which is then followed by 10 variations of "Actually, Gates never said that."
"I actually owned one of those (insert archaic by modern standards technology here)" which is followed by another 10 variations of "That's nothing. We didn't even have those abovementioned technology because Big Bang just occurred and we only had hydoren and helium available, you insensitive clod!!"
Snooze...
Remember 15+ years ago when a lot of products would feature in advertisements that they were made in the USA? A lot of it was a reaction to perceived threat from Japan and the thought of NAFTA. In current times that is a rarity, globalization aside. Even though people are buying Mercedes made in Alabama and tech support from India, it would be interesting to see a return of promotional campaign designed to promote goods made in the US. Perhaps there can be a similar campaign designed to promote companies that don't use overseas labor?
Posted by michael on Thursday April 29, @09:44PM
from the never-attended-skool dept.
idiotbob writes "I just fired up my scanner and uploaded the 1650-page (+/- 100 pages) 1998 Fall/Winter catalog from Sear and Roebuck in 300dpi, 24bit color, even the b&w pages! 100% Cotton V neck T-shirts (3 pack) for $12; Black and Decker cordless screwdriver, 40" Big screen Color TV, with remote control; Kingsize polyester bedspread ensembles in solid or floral pattern! Hosted on my home ISDN connection. Wow, things were different back then!
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
Check out this unix ad, also from 1981 (hi Bob! -dp). Brought to you by Bell Labs. It's amazing how times have changed......
Speaking of which, it's interesting to go back and call some of those old numbers (like for BBSes) and see who is there now. Make sure when you do that you ask them how much their Midwest Micro 486/DX4 is.
I wonder if there is a site on the net somewhere that documents this kind of stuff.
I was building my own computer in 1981. It had a 1 MHz 6502 processor, 1024 bytes of RAM, Teletype terminal, and paper tape program storage.
Clearly, sir, you should consider upgrading your webserver from the 1981 model.
Linux doesn't run on a 286. It needs the task switching and memory protection of a 386 or better. So yes, if you're running a 286 it's "don't make me laugh" time. Freedos OTOH will run on a 486.
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
I got it... 1...01...1...
Things have changed a bit since then!
We noticed.
Intellectual Property
Intellectual: of the mind
Property: that over which one has control
That is if you could even lift it....
At the bottom of the third to last page:
... Moon Lander by Greg Zumwalt
... ONLY $14.95
New product for the color computer
In this exciting new adventure for the Color Computer, you attempt to guide your moon lander to a safe landing. Watch out for hills and valleys, and don't run out of fuel! Tough, Challenging, and Exciting! You wont want to miss this one
Wikipedia is amazing -- it even has an entry for The Magic Wand word-processing software advertised on one of the catalog's pages:
Magic Wand (software)
Mods should visit Anti-Slash daily to see a running list of posts to avoid. They have a list of trick posts on their front page for their amusement.
You'd be amazed at the amount of duped +5 posts from the past that get modded up again and again, thanks to their database tool that stores +5 posts from every article. Trolls repost past +5s to get more karma for their troll accounts.
ByteCellar.com
Lend your support!
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
I dunno what I hated the most from the 1970's... The disco music, or the moustaches????
This guy is intentionally trying to confuse moderators into modding up the goatse link! He works for anti-slash!
But bits haven't changed a bit.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
Seagate's got a big clean room still in OKC, so you can get yer hard drives from Oklahoma, but probably not yer Office package.
ciao
I was confused until I realized what this is: You're making people look at goatsecx *and* getting moderated up for it!
Someone submit this troll to the site admins. :(
Sears sold off its credit card division this year to citybank, so now the only thing they get from it is free processing.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
But check page 31.
:-)
Microsoft charged quite a bit 20+ years ago for a compiler and still does.
Amazing how they get away with their pricing.
Thank you Linux and GCC for saving my butt
Here we are 24 years later, with computers that are twice as powerful as these, a hundred times as large, and so expensive that only the richest kings of Europe can afford them. Makes you think.
Corvus? Holy shit. I forgot about that stuff. Try about 1984, corvus was doing networking. TI PC no doubt, not just the IBM stuff. We are talking a network that was before appletalk, but really similar. Serial, multidrop.
Oh, and tape backup? How about pumping your data to a VHS VCR? And the first NAS box? That was a 10 megabyte or 20 megabyte (if you had lots of $$) hard drive that had a built in controller, just put it on the network!
TI-PC was the first machine that had 4 serial port capability, not the standard 2 ports.
WOW, was I really that geeky??
Troy
I'M WRITING THIS ON A DEC TERMINAL, DIALING IN ON A 110 BAUD ACOUSTIC MODEM. NOW IF YOU'LL EXCUSE ME MY SON NEEDS TO USE THE PH&4\ {S+/~ [CARRIER LOST]
funny that you mention eniac and von neumann in the same post. i know it's humor, but von neumann published what eckert and mauchly *couldn't* publish since they were under military classification at the time. so, naturally, everyone forgets about them.
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
It's worth noting that the above reduction covers the comments on *all* Slashdot stories. Perhaps this should just be posted at the top of each page?
You have circumvented the DMCA by scanning in example code and copyrighted material from 1984.
Prepare to be raided...
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
I am trying to find that parts catalog from 1842 so I can get this Analynic Engine to work. It is not the same since Ada had a hissy fit and quit making those punch cards for me.
Then I need that 1642 catalog so Blaize can work out the bugs in his thingamabob whatever he called it but it don't work too well either.
So they make computers using electronics now? Interesting to say the least. My 10 baud tin cans and kite-string modem works, but it is just too slow for me and it is the fastest that technology can go. It took me a day and a half to post this message.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Dont forget the lithium, guy. What whould the post-big bang universe have been withouth lithium?
Like C64 without warez....
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
we only had hydrogen and helium available
Pshhh, helium. You youngins are so spoiled.
Helium! Such luxury!
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I'm running gentoo so these old computers seem like athlon 64s, but def not those pentos!. I just found a UFO off SETI cause my computer is so fast.
yey gentoo!
(joke!)
Check out this picture at HardOCP that I actually uploaded awhile back (they spelt my name wrong damnit!)
For a paltry $8499 in 1989 at RadioShack (Canadian dollars in 1989?) you got:
20 Mhz 80386
VGA graphics
2 MB RAM (up to 16MB capacity)
Cache memory.
Monitor and mouse not included.
I may actually still have that piece of paper somewhere. Not sure what that says about me.
I remember paying 600 bucks for a 16k upgrade for an apple II.
anybody have the video pin outs for a amiga 500? I sent my athlon 2600 over to a friends house to do video editing and I want to see if I can get the damn thing to go online, or something like that.
Yes, I know it's off topic, but hell, it's close
Like arts? Like cheesy little Indie mags? Check out www.artwerkmag.com, and don't laugh at the bad coding please.
Yes, modern ads are more compelling. This comes from before the days of desktop publishing, remember-- it's easy to forget (especially if you weren't there) how easy Quark and Illustrator have made it for even the smallest company to produce professional looking ads.
Yes, I am a picky bastard.
If eighties vintage Ethernet was too expensive you could always build your own. Here are the specs:
Ethernet Blue Book
Several months after that, I saw a big ad in Popular Electronics or Byte for a 1 KB board for $1000 - a dollar a byte.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
Back 10 or 12 years ago, wasn't WalMart one putting American flags all over everything and a big part of "Buy American" campaigns? I could be mistaken.
It's just odd to see how they are now actively killing off American companies, or forcing them to offshore their production or sell to WalMart at a loss to compete. See Vlasic pickles, Master Locks, Dial soap, Levi's (although I think that might have been their own fault somewhat), etc.
I like music
You now, the variety that commits suicide between two of the hundreds of wires and changes the behaviour of your program. You also might want to keep a cat to take care of mice that chew insulation.
When generating high yeilds of HTTP trafic which mimicks that of vast floods of ligitimate requests, there are a few commercial packages available, however the same effect can be achieved by posting to slashdot a news story with a link to your website under test.
I dont get it.
Yup, the good old days. Anyone remember the Model 16 with dual 8 " floppies, and a Winchester HD, running XENIX? Their pocket computers were also popular (I believe they had a magazine just for them). Ah the days of Deskmate and OS9.
I tried to post a list, but the lameness filter didn't like it - too many junk characters. Check my journal.
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
They should add Bayesian filtering to the slashdot posting filter. Anything getting a high enough "annoying post" score gets modded down automatically.
It's been 23 years since 1981. Thus there have been about 15 18-month doubling periods. Based on the advert and Moore's law, one would expect 16k * 2^15 bytes (aka 2^29=512MB) to be available on computers these days.
The ad for Magic wand ("ALMOST PERFEC.") is about what software marketing used to be - "Crashproof and completely reliable", "command structure is simple logical and complete", "have not included any feature that is not thoroughly implemented."
Now, marketing is more like "Now with Blue!" or "We give kickbacks" or "Buy it because it's the same as what you already have!"
If you still have your old late 70's BYTE magazine, or Popular Electronics ( back when they were still worthwhile ) take a peek.
Packed wall to wall with 'history'. And you even have timeless articles to read, not just 'ads'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Damn. Just 2 days ago, I got rid of my old TRS-80, and 5 boxes of Radio Shack catalogs, Manuals, TRS-80 Magazines, I still even had the damn recipt. circa 1979, I think. If I had though anybody cared about old catalogs, I would have scanned them all before giving them to that insane art student.
I was filtering through some old catalogs myself from the early 80's. I was amused at the ads for graphics and printers of the time. The idea of color was a long way off. The video game ads were also extremely entertaining. We have come a long way since then, and also taken may steps backwards. I wonder what I will be thinking about catalogs from today in 2024?
Wow. PCs were just as boring in 1981 as they are now.
Ya'll a bunch of insensitive clods!
When I was designed circuits in MITs digital lab in 1975, 1K of RAM cost $50 ($200 in 2004 dollars). There was only bi-polar static RAM then. It was relatively fast too.
Any idea what Bob & Bruce are doing now?
And what happened to their company?
let's not forget that half the stuff that says 'made in USA' is actually made in the small manufacturing town of USA, japan. buy products made in the u.s.a. ... i believe it was a wwII era thing, but i may be mistaken.
you can't have everything, where would you put it?
I remember when we only used 8 fingers, and using the thumbs too was considered a major capacity increase. Then Alan Turing came up with the idea of using the toes too and with that doubling, Moore's Law was established and the modern era began.
Did anyone also recognized that old advertisements have long and informative texts. I also have many computer magazines from 80s and the strange thing I notice is not the prices but changes in today's advertisements.
Today's advertisements include nice logos, running technological sprites all over the screen, a big motto and some "WE ARE THE BEST" sentences.
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
OK -- sub par car's? Car's that consistlently fall in the bottom of reviews? American car's that perform in the lower half of the curve?
Or -- from the recent auto show locally -- SUV's who's body panels don't line up so badly that you can't open the doors? (That car should never have been at the auto show -- why did the dealer bring it?)
Poor build quality?
Outdated technology?
High price/low functionality?
Do you have a better example?
A interesting footnote -- Far more people have viewed that catalog in the past several hours than in the entire 1980's!
Things haven't changed one whit. My first computer took forever to load the word processor because I couldn't afford the extra $500 for a hard drive. Now I have over 200 times more memory and millions more KB's of disk space, and the word processor takes forever to load because I am too cheap to buy a faster computer with the memory needed.
OTOH, maybe things have changed after all. Now I am memory bound, not disk I/O bound. Oh, and that was 1988, come to think of it. In 1981, my notion of high tech in the word processing department was an IBM Selectric II that could erase my typos.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
We made a fix for that, if the wrong figures go in, now instead the machine plays your favorite MP3 file from the nearest file sharing network, downloads the latest spyware/adware, and then accepts a supeona from the RIAA for you to appear in court.
;)
So make sure that you type everything in correctly this time...
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
thats the year I was born. All you older folks sure used to pay a lot for some text on a screen.
Larry Lessig should use this as an example of how dumb our copyright laws are. As the RIAA and MPAA and most of Congress would have us interpret the law, this is a copyright violation.
Does that make ANY sense in the real world?
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
One bank of 8 chips would have been 64K or 256K, not 128K.
The Mac Plus was the first one with SIMMs; four slots, you had to put SIMMs in in pairs (they were 8 bits wide, and the Mac had a 16-bit data bus), and you could put in 256K or 1Mbit SIMMs.
I have, in my attic, an Apple II computer with a little over a Meg of RAM (1 MB RamWorks card, plus 64K on the motherboard, and another 64K buffer on the printer card), and a Mac Plus with 2.5 Mb of RAM. I should plug them in and see if they still work...
No, he is changing which picture links to the goatse man in an attempt to get modded up. That shot is from when the picture happened to be on that page. And I'm not trying to get people to look at goatse, that is why I blurred it out.
Of all the apostrophes used in that post, only one was correctly used. Can you guess which one? Of course not.
What amazes me is that the catalog is more "sincere" that modern ones.
Look at the footnotes, most of them are trademark acknowledgements (like "CP/M is trademark of the Digital Research Corporation"). Basically you get what you see.
Computers these days are really sold as black boxes, without specifications anywhere and with all kinds of hidden "features" (as in DRMed CDs).
Today, the footnotes would say something like "This device is not sold, it is licensed. Requires windows. Interface is proprietary and protected by DMCA. You agree to give us your soul by using the Product" in 1pt font in a hidden corner.
GPG 0x1B479C78
My apologies for the ' debacle. I'll never do it again. Not.
Terrabyte array (interesting reading, ugly box)
:)
also, 160 gig drives are the cheapest per gig at the moment. I just finished last week
An ad introducing the Macintosh, in Newsweek in 1984. I love how it introduces you to the "mouse" and "cut and paste". And the glowing endorsements from Bill Gates, Mitch Kapor, and Fred Gibbons. (Who?)
I've got an original Mac promo insert that was included in Time Magazine. It's kind of a cool retro thing to keep around with my old magazines with programs that you had to type in. The latter kept my brother and myself out of my parents' hair for endless hours. I think my folks must have gotten twenty times the cash benefit out of that knowing that it kept us busy each month for hours on end when it came in the mail.
Later on, I think they were thrilled when we discovered that we could program dice rollers and character sheet programs for AD&D. The couple of months I spent programming a text adventure must have also been a treat to them.
Gah! I've been a dork for a long time...
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
I'm still supporting most of this stuff at work!
I am not left-handed, either!
don't and can't - I found two.
You're absolutely right. In those days, computers were just becoming affordable to small businesses or even home users, but anyone buying one either had a real compelling business need for one, or was a wizard already. Or both.
In those days it wasn't uncommon that "installing" a device meant modifying the code to be able to use it, especially if you mixed and matched gear.
Among the things you weren't surprised to find in the shipping box were complete schematics, engineering drawings (with exploded views of some hard-to-service mechanical bits), and a hard-copy listing of the monitor software. I think it was the TRS-80 that was the first to do away with all those user-unfriendly bits of paperwork.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.