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Gadgets, Then & Now
An anonymous reader writes in to tell us about "A funny article about gadgets from the 70's & 80's compared to gadgets of today. Amazing that you can fit 25,000 5 1/4 diskettes on one 8GB compact flash, and phones weighed 11.5 pounds! "
Gee willikers! Remember when cars looked like this?? Wacky! Or remember when the earth looked like this?!!? Times sure are a changin'!
Making you think you're crazy is a billion dollar industry.
I can fit anything on my flash cards. They're so small I just pile it all on top of them.
Once I put a cup of coffee on my flash card, technology is awesome.
Woah woah woah! Are you trying to tell me that progress has been made in the past 30 years with regards to technology?!? I'm glad this is finally getting some press...
This guy's the limit!
Holy cow!! Going by this trend, things are going to be very very small in the future. Maybe we might need eyes with microscopic powers to use some of the gadgets of the future.
Linux Help
for all things on Linux
A whole six items. *cough*
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
TFA isn't very deep, I was expecting an interesing and in-depth read.
As the old joke goes: Nostalgia just ain't what it used to be.
Don't you just hate it when people reply to your signature?
This article took all of what, 5 minutes using Google Image Search to throw together? Brilliant!
Making you think you're crazy is a billion dollar industry.
Thing is, as clunky as all that stuff was back in the day, the same some exists now, only in sleeker, more refined format. If you look especially how much a lot of stuff like phones and computers have shrunk in the last 20 years while increasing capacity, it's enough to make you believe that powerful, wearable and unobtrusive computers etc will be common within say 15 years. The hype we get over new products that disappoint is often enough to make you say "it's all crap", but comparatives like this is a reminder that real progress is made.
(It used to mean "that thing that you plug into the wall that lets you talk to other people far away", for you kids. Yes, outlets in the wall, at your home.)
I wonder how you'd explain todays über-gadgets to someone from the eighties. "This? Oh, it's my .. um, tricorder. Yeah, that's it."
on the xbox 360 I really don't see that 30 year difference.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
The downside is that techology seems to be getting more unreliable, from a user perspective.
I'm on my third PS2 right now, but my Atari 2600 (still fun!) works like new...
Someone--I think it was Robert Kuttner but can't find the reference--was trying to explain the "paradox" that all of the economic figures seem good, yet polls consistently show U. S. citizens are pessimistic about the economic future.
His belief is that the problem is that the official inflation figures contain a mixture of prices for things like consumer electronics gadgets, which have continuously decreased in price, and things like healthcare costs and college tuition, which have continuously increased in price at far faster rate than "the" inflation rate.
The problem is that things like healthcare and education are much more important ultimately than cellular phones that can show video.
He said that we are turning into "a tchotchke society," rich in frivolous gadgets but poor in literacy rates, infant mortality, etc.
I love my iPod, but I'm worried about my medical insurance.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
As a kid (lucky me), I had a seiko RC-1000 that you could program with a commodore 64! It took a shitload of time to fill in all the data and there was a maximum of 80 lines, but still! I remember trying to program my french homework in it, but in the end it took longer than just learning the work by heart :)
RC-1000 and other nerd watch nostalgia: http://pocketcalculatorshow.com/nerdwatch/fun2.htm l
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
I used floppies more than I'll ever use flash. I only used the big mobile phone for a few weekends as Dutyman, but it was more important than my cell is now. Everything else is just cosmetic. My old 8088 PC pretty much does what my current one does.
The big difference is the WWW, especially search engines. I used to spend lots of time in libraries and with the Yellow Pages.
He said that we are turning into "a tchotchke society," rich in frivolous gadgets but poor in literacy rates, infant mortality, etc.
That's because we can get brown people in distant countries to make our gadgets for us on the cheap. We can't do the same for health care or education. If the economic worm turned and those people weren't willing to work for so little, we'd find ourselves not only health-care-less but gadget-less as well! We are rich in shit, cheap crap which relies on the world's have-nots to remain cheap. A scheme this unbalanced can only last for so long.
Freedom: "I won't!"
And where do the laptops fit? 19 inch laptops? 12 inch laptops? I get confused!
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
I also remember him being amazed at the performance of the first 486 laptop we got in. For a long time it was the most powerful computer in the company. It really is a pity that chain smoking and the probably toxic fumes of the environment we worked in got to him. The industry's really come a long way since those days and I think he would have enjoyed watching the progress. Not to mention smaller cellphones for the men's room...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Exactly. Try misplacing 25000 floppy disks.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
This has been happening for a while. How about the techonolical changes from 1940 to 1970?
Nostalgia is good, only to see how good we have it now and how much we have screwed it up.
It was awesome just to be able to afford and use one (mobile phone that is).
A much better source for this kind of stuff is the Retrothing Blog. Definitely a favorite of my RSS feed list.
Keep in mind that the games were on cartridges with ROMs that could hold up to 24 kilobytes (IIRC). The 128 bytes of RAM was only for temporary data storage, like lives left, current score, level, player position, etc.
www.6502asm.com - Code 6502 assembly or.. DIE!!
"Computers may be twice as fast now as they were in 1973, but your average voter is still just as drunk and stupid as ever."
Joking aside, why is this news? Here, to save time I've got your next article right here:
Six things to do instead of reading this non-story
...eh, this ain't getting any funnier. Best stop with three.
barack to the future?
Back then, when I pressed "record" on a tape recorder or the shutter button on a camera, it did what I wanted instantaneously.
None of this goddamn 2-second delay, or booting into the OS for 30 seconds to figure out how to record from the microphone.
Nowadays I am reluctant to buy any technology unless it does the basic things that technology used to do for me in the 1970s. There's no way I'd go back, of course, but I think one of the great failures of consumer electronics today is that much of it is incapable of basic features 30 years back---largely as a matter of priorities and crappy user interface design.
Xcott
There are some of us out there who write for 128 bytes. We even write in C. Take a look at www.microchip.com. Oh, and that mouse you're using, that's got 128 bytes of RAM in it.
K.
It didn't make that big of a difference when you only had four colors per line on a 162x192 resolution. More RAM lets you have prettier graphics, and graphics won't make your gameplay any better. Two out of the three next-gen consoles will have 512MB of RAM, and no improvements to actual gameplay.
no chicks want big vaginas.
technology when first introduced is seen as obscene - an abomination - and is untrusted. So once introduced - the race is on for tech to become as seamless and unobtrusive as possible. Hence, silent, small, easily coordinated, etc. The ideal condition is technology that doesn't look like tech at all.
big cars? not necessarily. most expensive.
big houses? again - not necessarily. donald trump sells apts for $30 million here in ny. 1500 square feet.
consensus is the issue. it's what everyone agrees to.
for example, I work in media - and most in media are gay. so amongst gay men, the ideal condition for the phallus is not large at all as that presents problems in regards to what they like to do with the phallus.
women like large phalluses, but in general - they like the idea of "taming" one and having possession of it more than actually having sex with one. I know... my dick is 9 1/2 inches long. they love looking at it and stuff - but they hate sex. which then puts me in a tough position. Most will confess after sex that while women love to look at big dongs - there is a sweet spot as far as size is concerned. It's 6 inches to 8 inches - where it feels good and is big enough to be felt but small enough to not destroy tissue.
...is the anachronisms you get in "near future" movies and TV shows of the recent past. I still smirk whenever I remember RoboCop walking through a room of reel-to-reel data storage machines before plugging himself into a crime database, or Misato calling NERV headquarters on a bulky corded car phone.
The thing about near-future cinema is they always spend more time thinking about the big technology changes than the little ones.
In the end of the 80s the most popular removable storage media was the 5 1/4 inch diskette, capable of storing 360 KB (later 1200 KB). If you compare that to a big compact flash card of today, you could store close to 25 000 diskettes on ONE 8GB CompactFlash card
At the end of the 80's, the most popular removable storage media was the 3.5" floppy. They actually came out in the early to mid 80's. They were also around a dollar each, as opposed to the $480 for the SanDisk 8GB CompactFlash.
Geez Louise! Talk about comparing apples to kumquats!
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
"What's the matter, Amy? Did you swallow your cellphone again?" -Leela
No wonder techies are getting fatter these days. In the past at least carrying 25000 disks and a mobile phone would be equivalent to a decent gym session. Now all you do is carry a key ring and phone smaller than your big mac you had at lunch!
-- Cheer, Cheer, The Red and the White.
And if You'll remember back in the days, progress meant "better, faster, stronger, superior." Let's take a comparison of the Ford Model T or Model A, and compare to a Ford Ranger or Taurus (Yes I mentioned a truck in a list of general cars, you'll soon find otu why.) Both the model T and model As were lighter, less powerful, did their job, and because of them, new laws that made no sense were introduced. (A man must walk ahead of a driving lady with a lantern to signal she was coming) as cars got faster and more dangerous, we had the laws of speed limits introduced (NOT a bad thing, guaranteed, but still...) and eventually we had laws for more standards (when most of the problems being caused generally were at the fault of the people not doing the one thing they should do - learn about their property, what it does, how it does it, and any possible problems that may be encountered in the usage of the product.) In my opinion, no matter how far we achieve progress, an equal amount of regression is created that directly counteracts the point of progression. In the USA - we create progressive new technology (stem-cell research, more efficient internal combustion engines, new progress considering the 100x more positive uses of marijuana and homoepathy) and we get regressive, restrictive, draconian laws for things like that that actually limit our potential to benefit and prosper from these new technologies. Vinyl>casette>CD>DVD>MP3 is probably the best example I can provide of sugh laws coming into effect for new technologies. Instea of it being used for the best - it's labeled as the worst and laws are put into place to restrict it's usage. What a contradictory and paradoxical world we live in...
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The rules of the market do apply.
The problem is that the arts, health and education, are essentially craft work, skilled labor. There are limits to what you can achieve through mass production, there are limits to recruitment when the pay is minimum wage.
Not only that, but it was 1.19MHz and had a display screen of 190x160.
Source
Exactly. Try misplacing 25000 floppy disks.
I'm sure it's possible, Enron lost a hundred or so boxes of documents.
I'd not worry about medical insurance. It's still considered a luxury (Insurance for medical attention considered a luxury while CAR [non-life critical] insurance is now not almost 100% mandatory BY LAW and YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR IT AND NOT THE GOVERNMENT.) Hello? Can we say FORCED CONSUMERISM? Since when did the states or federal government decide that we're LEGALLY REQUIRED TO GIVE MONEY TO A *BUSINESS?* Last I checked, if the gov't required anything, THEY PROVIDED FOR IT OUT OF OUR TAX MONEY (Until the '60s at least - that's what my 1910 born grandfather remembers - if Uncle Sam required you to have it, Uncle Sam provided it for you out of tax money, until around the 60s)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I don't know that it was the most popular, though it was certainly available. I left high-school with boxes upon boxes of 5.25" floppy disks, but not very many 3.5" floppies. Remember, two of the most widely deployed computer systems of the era (at least in the US), the Apple ][ and the Commodore 64, primarily used 5.25" floppies. Factoid: The Commodore 64 was the most widely produced single computer model ever.
Program Intellivision!
Well into the 1990's, my most cost effective backup medium in dollars per megabyte was 5.25 inch diskettes.
I remember waiting in vain for Zip media to reach the dollar-per-unit price point, where it could have dominated the removable storage market for a while. Instead, we were stuck with floppies for another decade. There are *still* many situations where floppies are required, although cheap CDR and now cheap flash RAM is starting to fix that problem.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
At a dollar each, it would cost you $25,000 to put that same 8GB on floppies - quite a bit more than $480! Never mind the inconvenience.
For storage that you can carry in your shirt pocket, this comparison would be spot-on if they had chosen 3.5" disks instead. It still shows pretty well how the convenience has increased and the price per MB has dropped dramatically.
Don't forget it also would have taken a minute or two of reading emails from clients who wanted their gadgets marketed. Quality stuff.
* Atari 2600
* Home version of Pac Man arcade machine
* TRS-80 Color Computer 2 with thermal printer and a tape cassette drive
* Cassette taping my favorite TV shows, bet the MPAA and RIAA would have been after my arse for audio recording Night Rider, MASH, and Tales of the Golden Monkey on cassette as a kid. Also had a sore arm from holding the casette recorder to the TV speaker. >_>
* First remote controlled 4-wheel drive truck. I promptly tore that open and cut all the wires to try and figure out how it worked. Never saw anything remote controlled again after my father came home and I had a sore arse.
* Merline game, the red phone like thing.
* That Dungeons and Dragons game where you had these little metal figures on an electronic game board and as you moved the dragon moved towards you and you placed wall blocks to where you bumped in to walls.
You know, the more I think about this stuff the more I remembered an old dream and I think I just realized what that dream symbolized. Walks down memory lane can be fun and enlightening.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
P33p73z |=R0m da 80z w3r3 teh L4M0rZ!!!one!@!@!!!111MFA0
Man we're never gonna look as dumb as them with their disks and their car stereos.
And don't tell me about how you can still boot your OS off of a floppy. If you can't boot from a USB stick (assuming your computer doesn't have an optical drive), go complain to whoever writes your OS.
20+ year old technology. Honestly.
Remember -- that was the prevailing fashion of the time -- but just because they dressed up conservatively (by today's standards) doesn't mean that they couldn't dance up a storm when you got them in the mood.
(( suggestion: wait 30 seconds before giving up on the video ))
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Point taken. And you're probably right. I withdraw my comment.
There is simply too much glass..
I'd add that floppies are only cheap now, but when the 5.25 inch disk appeared it was so hideously expensive it was actually worth paying $15 (in 80's money) for a disk notcher* so you could flip them over and use both sides.
url:http://8bit.dk/temp/sale_pic/disk_notcher.jpg
Blank until
Compare the cell phones from the '80s and early '90s to cell phones of today. +5 second LAG to see a number I just pressed FINALLY show up on a screen? +5 second lag to hit the call button and seeing the phone LCD switch over to say "calling/dialing" and another ten seconds to hear a dialtone? I got faster response from my old Nokia phone. People developing technology today have absolutely no fucking clue, period, and this kind of gap does far more than prove it.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The OP can walk for free.
geeks would lust after a cluster of them they could read beowulf to
A disk notcher? You silly man, you could have achieved the same effect with three cuts with a sharp knife. That's what I did anyway
And yes, they were hideously expensive. The cheapest floppies I could get in 1984 were 100 Dutch guilders (45 EURO) for a box of 10 good quality 3M disks. A real bargain compared to buying them a piece (as most shops did). Then you also had the Verbatim floppies, that eh, were not verbatim at all. Half of them failed within a 2 month period. I still refuse to buy anything made by Verbatim, even after all those years.
I already know some of you will just think I'm an old fart fondly remembering a simpler time and confuse it for a better time but that really isn't what I'm trying to do here.
I liked the styling risks that some companies took back then. I get the sense that it was easier to take risks with consumer products back then.
My favorite car radio of all times was the Sanyo Tachard radio. It was shaped like a tachometer and locked with a key so that you could remove it. There were a couple of different models, I think one was 8 watts and the other was 32 watts. For the day, the sound quality was excellent and it made the inside of my Fiat 850 Spyder look almost space age.
RCA made a bedroom stereo that looked like an astronaut's helmet! When you lifted the face shield, the eyes were the controls, the nose the frequency dial, and the mouth was the eight-track deck.
Initial technology was always interesting too:
The VIC-20 from Comodore was an exceptional started computer that didn't cost an arm and a leg. It ran a form of basic that was fun to learn and use. It really was a toy and could be used to play games.
The Sinclair ZX-80 was an ultimate cheap computer. In many ways it was terrible (especially the keyboard) but it represented a starting point for so many inventive people to perform exparaments and modifications that I have to say it did a lot for the hobby computer industry and probably launched more people into computer related careers than anything else ever has.
Sometimes what was right and what was commercially successful were in two different worlds.
The eight-track won out over the cassette at first, despite the fact that it was more complex and lower quality. It litterally took a decade for people to wake up!
Sony Betamax was hands down better than VHS. It was visibly superior and actually less complex.
Communications technology was always a big deal.
My grandfather was a big baseball fan. For Christmas one year he was given a transistor AM radio with one of those really lousy ear-pieces. From April through October it was almost welded to his ear. It was that big a part of his life, I would even call it a life-changing thing for him. He no longer had to miss the game no matter where he went.
My friend was the first on the block to get color TV. I was so jealous! One night we watched a cop show on his TV and the flashing lights were blue - which made no sense to me because where I was from all cop cars, fire trucks, and ambulances had red lights. It really confused me.
My hometown was fairly small and dial phone technology came late. I was able to pick up the phone and tell Sarah, the operator that I wanted to talk to my mom and she would actually track her down or if she couldn't she would offer to call one of my grandparents for me! This is one place where technology may actually have been a hinderance for small towns. Today, the operator is likely in a different time-zone and has no knowlege of your town.
My dad was a volinteer fireman and we had a "fire phone" in our home for years. If the phone rang steady, you picked up the phone and listened and you would hear the actual person reporting the fire or, in the event of a "second alarm" or "mutual aid" call a dispatcher. Us kids were taught to always listen if dad was home or to try to ignore the call if he wasn't (we always listened). Most of the cafes and bars in town were also wired into the fire phone system so that they could pass the word to their fire-fighting customers. I think today's system is far superior to the old solution but not nearly as much fun.
My '64 Buick had a speed buzzer and auto-dimming headlights. Features I loved. I would almost rather have the buzzer than cruise control today. I really wish my truck had auto-dimming headlights. I am really glad that it corners better and stops faster than my '64 Buick did though. Believe it or not, my 2000 Dodge 5.2L RAM gets about the same MPG as my '64 Buick did and, the '64 Buick had a 401 CID "Wildcat 445" engine and a 4bbl carb!
Your OS isn't on the machine until it's booted. Booting from a USB stick is a BIOS function, and the reason it's screwed up to expect that is that the USB interface is 10 times more complicated than the basic low-level functions your PC is supposed to be able to perform before the OS loads. The fact that onboard motherboard code can boot from USB probably gives people in Redmond sleepless nights.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
So we've made progress, but how much of it really counts?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Yes, you're right. By the end of the 80s the 3.5"was the most popular disk by far. The Macintosh started that and then came machines like the Atari ST and the Commodore Amiga. By the end of the eighties quite a few magazines used to come with 640k disks on the front (should be enough for anyone ;-p) and even then we used to joke about the big old 5.25 disks. A couple of years on from this and the HD FD had taken over as being the disk of choice and we used to scoff at the then puny 640k disks (not enough for everyone :-p) etc etc
In fact, I've just thought, the first Apple superdrive was super because it could r/w to SD,DD and HD floppy formats. Sorry just thought of that . . . shows how the meaning of 'super' changes too.
TFA would have been better if they'd done any of the pictures to the same scale aswell.
PS: I'd like to see the Motorola RAZR put out 5W - the transportables could!
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
We're talking the late 80's, not the late 70's. In the late 80's the two most popular systems in the US were the IBM PC and the Apple Macintosh.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
It's still apples versus oranges. Few people use CompactFlash in the same way people used to use floppies. It used to be people would copy files or software to a floppy, and GIVE IT AWAY! At a dollar a pop, it was cheap. When was the last time you heard someone giving away their $480 flashcard? When was the last time you bought some shrinkwrap software that came on CompactFlash?
The floppy should be compared to the CDR instead.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Not in homes, schools and libraries. Our labs filled with Apple ][es didn't evaporate once the Mac started selling. In fact, our high school didn't have any Macs available to students. A couple were available to teachers. But we had several dozen ][es. The only 3.5" floppy-using machines we had were a network of PS/2s that the business department bought. Those were only available to students taking business dept classes.
FWIW, the PC XT and PC AT both used 5.25" floppies primarily, and many small businesses that had adopted early were still using them. (For instance, my tax accountant neighbor that I did occasional tech support for, and my employer--the local independent Radio Shack franchise.) It wasn't until around 1992 or 93 that I started using 3.5" floppies more regularly than 5.25" floppies, after I graduated high school. I finally switched A: over to 3.5" sometime in 1994.
If you're talking start of the 80s, I'd say cassette was more popular than floppy, at least for home users.
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
Yeah, we just used scissors. Didn't even make it square, just cut a little 'V' into the opposite side. Don't think I ever made a coaster -- you know what I mean. :P
Stupider like a fox! - H.S.
Telling a person to take the bus or walk is not a reasonable solution. That is telling the person to be a serf. While there may be the occasional wealthy person that can walk or ride a bike/bus to work, the only reason that those people can do it is because very few people try. The number of well paying jobs that can be maintained withour a car are very few. This is perticularly true of the middle class jobs. If you are very high skilled, you might be able to demand some unusual perks. If you are unskilled and doing a min. wage job, the employer realizes that they are pulling from the bottom and does not expect that everyone can afford a car. The vast majority which is the middle simply have to have a job to work. Many employers actually list it in their policy manuals as a requirement for employment.
That being said. You are not required to buy insurance to drive. You are requried to prove you can financially cover any losses you cause to others. Most states (all?) allow you to have a secured account that is you self insurance. This can earn interest, and in no way requries you to pay a business. But just like bail bonds, it is WAY cheaper to let someone else keep that account on your behalf for a fee. I don't find it worth it to self insure, so I pay an outside company to insure me. When I bought my Suzuki Swift brand new or $7500 our the door, I did not buy Comp/Coll insurance. This was neigther illegal nor was it a good idea for obviouse reasons. I have purchase liablility insurance for every vehicle I have owned because it was way cheaper for a much higher level of protection than what I could supply myself.
I remember the space helment stereos. Those and computer perfection games:p ace_age_transistor_game.htm
http://www.designandfun.com/computer_perfection_s
Were used as props in 70s Sci-Fi shows all over the place.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
You silly man, you could have achieved the same effect with three cuts with a sharp knife.
Silly? Say that when you've cut notches in 200 disks by hand in one sitting. Three cuts sound trivial, but 600 is painful (and I understand 1000 cuts causes death).
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For Minority Report, they supposedly consulted a 'future technologist' (or whatever you'd call such a person) to thoroughly think all these things through -- in detail. I can't remember all those details right now, but there was a programme about future tech where this was discussed.
"Good news, everyone!"
Believe it or not, a Model T Ford did about the same MPG as an average modern car. Sure, it wasn't os fuel-efficient as today's engines, but then again there were no windscreen wipers, no radio, no aircon, no ..... :) Same MPG, makes one think.
"Good news, everyone!"
FTA: it was quite a longlasting format
The format, maybe, but the tapes, certainly not. The endless (looped) tape was a Bad Idea, and the cartridge design was crap so they'd jam all the time. Good riddance.
Anyplace to get one of those old-skewl brickfones (or even better, a 2-piece with battery), but using somewhat modern multi-band GSM?
Preferably with a nice simple VFD.. It'd be better of course if it were modern-engineered but retro-styled, so you could use all that volume for more Li-Ion space, larger antennas, etc.
I looked it up, and you are wrong. You see the issues are in the symantics. Yes, you must be insured, but since you can insure yourself, you do not have to BUY insurance. Here are the codes concerning self-insurance in Pennsylvania. They tell you both how much money you must have as well as how to get your very own self-insurance card.
The Pennsylvania Code website
Unfolded it, put it back in drive. All data read just fine.
True story.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
You're talking about high school. I'm talking about the real world. Some classrooms still had Apple IIs all the way into the late 90's, but so what?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I'm just saying that the most popular media wasn't necessarily 3.5" media at that point. From 89-90, there is a strong argument that 3.5" was the up and comer, but not dominant yet amongst the bulk of users.
Program Intellivision!