[Cialug] I Remember When Computer Specs

[Matt Breitbach]

The real fun was hacking an old system with more RAM and having to solder
the RAM chips on to the system board.  Can't remember the exact model, but I
watched my boss when he was 12 or 13 years old solder more memory on to one
of his system boards and thought that he was crazy to do such a thing.
Turned out ok though, and he had 4MB of RAM instead  of 2MB.

 

  _____  

From: cialug-bounces at cialug.org [mailto:cialug-bounces at cialug.org] On Behalf
Of j.bengtson at mchsi.com
Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 11:49 AM
To: Central Iowa Linux Users Group
Subject: Re: [Cialug] I Remember When Computer Specs

 

Is this just a sneaky way of identifying the old fogies here?

The first computer I got to lay hands on was an Apple II (48K RAM, 1MHz 6502
processor, monochrome green monitor).  Several years later, when they first
announced an external hard drive option, I remember wondering what in the
world anyone would need 20 MB of hard drive space for...

----- Original Message -----
From: Todd Walton 
To: Central Iowa Linux Users Group 
Sent: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:47:55 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: [Cialug] I Remember When Computer Specs

I saw a person's Outlook cache file the other day that was 19GB large.
A friend pointed out to me that his first computer (he's a youngin')
had no more than 4GB of hard drive space total.

You know how people compare memory and hard drive space like that?
They scratch the salt on their shoulder and say 'I
remember when computers only came with 500 MB of RAM.'  Well, it seems
to me like that can only go so far back.  There was a certain point
(the mid 80s?) where there started to emerge a PC standard, in the
form of the "IBM PC compatible".  I'm a latecomer to this scene, so
correct me if I'm wrong, but before that time computers were largely
packaged as complete products where you got what you got, and there
were several different types.

Comparing the amount of RAM in a Commodore 64 to a modern PC doesn't
make sense.  The Commodore 64 or others didn't have the same
architecture, they didn't use RAM in the same way.  Obviously it's
amazing that we can package several gigs of memory into a single stick
of silicon these days and it's actually affordable.  That's clearly
better than we could do in 1985.  But there's something not quite
right about comparing them as if there's some linear scale they both
exist on.

--
Todd
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