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Anyone remember the "good ole days" of hardware?
#277370 - 02/26/12 10:34 PM
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The BBS discussion reminds me of the "First" computer I had...
When a 200 meg hard drive was $200, and now you can get 2 terabyte drives cheaper.
When a 1/2 meg video card cost more than some 1 Gig video cards now cost.
That I pay $30 for broadband and I used to pay $20 for dial up.
When sound cards were over $200 and now they're cheap for 7.1 surround sound.
14" color monitors were $200 and now you can get 22" widescreen monitors cheaper.
My first 4X CD reader was $200, and now I have a $22 DVD R/W setup.
4 Megs of Memory was $200, now you can get 16 GB cheaper.
My 33 MHZ 486 cpu cost more than 2.6 ghz dual cores cost now.
Boy technology has advanced.
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| Bekki Doll |
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Re: Anyone remember the "good ole days" of hardware?
[Re: greybeard]
#277385 - 02/26/12 11:41 PM
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Quote:
The BBS discussion reminds me of the "First" computer I had...
My first computer was a holiday gift from my parents when I was a much younger dolly in '84. It was an IBM PCjr with 128KB, a non-chiclet keyboard, 5.25" 360KB DS/DD floppy drive and RGB monitor for around $2000 or so. While it wasn't able to play many games in the end (though the PCjr cartridge port of "Pitfall II" was pure awesome) I used it to learn how to program and to dig into its internals.
With how emulation is advancing I will be quite giddy to see a complete IBM 5150 i8088 system emulated on a phone (with choice of authentic MDA or CGA). Though I'm sure it would be tough to attach the 5.25" 360KB DS/DD drives to the thing. Much less a compact cassette drive. ;-)
And yes I have the emulator for that rig right here. Ah, back in the day when old desktop iron would boot to Cassette BASIC. And we liked, no, we LOVED it that way!
--Bekki
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Combating functional illiteracy with latex-clad drama since the '80s, because old video games rule!
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Re: Anyone remember the "good ole days" of hardware?
[Re: greybeard]
#277423 - 02/27/12 03:29 AM
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The first computer that I bought was a Tandy 8088 PC with dual floppy drives. No hard drive. My dad took one of his old 20 meg hard drives that he saved from being thrown out when the rest of the computer died. Since there was no place to properly place it, he had to strap it in to the inside of the system so it was in a stationary location in the system.
I think I bought that in 1990 or 1991.
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| redk9258 |
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Re: Anyone remember the "good ole days" of hardware?
[Re: Llaffer]
#277430 - 02/27/12 03:56 AM
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> The first computer that I bought was a Tandy 8088 PC with dual floppy drives.
Was the inside lined with leather?
 
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italie |
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[Re: greybeard]
#277438 - 02/27/12 04:56 AM
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> The BBS discussion reminds me of the "First" computer I had...
>
> When a 200 meg hard drive was $200, and now you can get 2 terabyte drives cheaper.
>
> When a 1/2 meg video card cost more than some 1 Gig video cards now cost.
>
> That I pay $30 for broadband and I used to pay $20 for dial up.
>
> When sound cards were over $200 and now they're cheap for 7.1 surround sound.
>
> 14" color monitors were $200 and now you can get 22" widescreen monitors cheaper.
>
> My first 4X CD reader was $200, and now I have a $22 DVD R/W setup.
>
> 4 Megs of Memory was $200, now you can get 16 GB cheaper.
>
> My 33 MHZ 486 cpu cost more than 2.6 ghz dual cores cost now.
>
> Boy technology has advanced.
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| Andrew |
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Girl Watcher
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Re: Anyone remember the "good ole days" of hardware?
[Re: greybeard]
#277456 - 02/27/12 06:18 AM
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> When sound cards were over $200
I couldn't afford a SoundBlaster back then so had to settle for a Pro AudioSpectrum.
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A story of one man and his obsession with the female anatomy.
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| Bekki Doll |
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A cynical yet secular shiny retrogamer, thread ressurector and fan of the word "gay".
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Re: Anyone remember the "good ole days" of hardware?
[Re: Andrew]
#277460 - 02/27/12 06:56 AM
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Quote:
I couldn't afford a SoundBlaster back then so had to settle for a Pro AudioSpectrum.
When I got my 80286 CompuAdd I bought a cheap MediaVision Thunder Board for it. And it worked well.
While the Thunder Board hasn't been in my possession for some time I still have the ol' stock 8-bit Paradise VGA card that the CompuAdd had installed. It is a great retro card that can perfectly emulate Hercules, CGA and Herc modes. Wild, wacky stuff! And it's in my 486SX right now.
I tried running W16 on it but due to the low RAM on the card I can get the full 640x480x256. But the palette-changing was very snowy. It didn't crash and it still ran.
To me it is THE video card for retro DOS games just for the video emulation alone. An old DOS shareware game called "SpaceWar" looks quite faboo in hi-rez Herc as opposed to CGA 640x200x2.
Maybe I can boot up the CompuAdd with only 512KB of RAM...
--Bekki
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Combating functional illiteracy with latex-clad drama since the '80s, because old video games rule!
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Re: Anyone remember the "good ole days" of hardware?
[Re: Bekki Doll]
#277485 - 02/27/12 04:15 PM
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My first computer was a commodore VIC-20. The cassete player/recorder was not very compact...
My proudest emulation/semi-hacking moment ever is still when I hacked up a DB-25 cable to connect to my Commodore 64's 1541 floppy disk drive to dump my own disk images using Star Commander in DOS 
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Remember when you had to buy a processor, AND a math coprocessor?
[Re: greybeard]
#277487 - 02/27/12 04:33 PM
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That is when my first computer was purchased. Back in the 486 days.
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Re: Anyone remember the "good ole days" of hardware?
[Re: URherenow]
#277489 - 02/27/12 04:57 PM
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> My first computer was a commodore VIC-20. The cassete player/recorder was not very
> compact...
Ditto. Loved the Scott Adam Adventures on cart though. Also it had some decent Arcade ports and 'clones'. Cosmic Cruncher was like a Pac-Man/Clean Sweep hybrid to me.
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| yaggy |
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Re: Anyone remember the "good ole days" of hardware?
[Re: URherenow]
#277490 - 02/27/12 05:01 PM
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> My first computer was a commodore VIC-20. The cassete player/recorder was not very
> compact...
High-five, that was me too. I was so pissed when I got a RAM expansion cartridge and found out it shifted all the address spaces so my regular programs wouldn't run right with it installed. That sucked. Well, so did 8 colors, 4kb memory and the "tape drive." The C-64 was such a major step up, I loved that damn thing.
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Re: Anyone remember the "good ole days" of hardware?
[Re: yaggy]
#277491 - 02/27/12 05:23 PM
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> The C-64 was such a major step up, I loved that damn thing.
My step "up" from the Vic-20 was a 'Turbo XT' complete with turbo 4.77 to 10 Mhz switch on the case.
CGA-RGB & CGA-Composite graphics. Not many games outside of AGI Sierra supported the composite that I owned...But Starflight was amazing. After that I played Wasteland. Even the crummy PC speaker sound couldn't detract from my pleasure and awe of those titles.
No hard drive - and 2x 5 1/4" Low Density (256kb) disk drives.
It came with 128 KB Ram - which I upgrades with individual chips to socket I believe to 512, might have gotten it up to 640KB.
After that (A long time later) bought a Quantex P100. Now *that* was an upgrade...lol. Loved the Ensoniq Soundscape and the ATI Mach64 - I was in heaven...lol.
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| Bekki Doll |
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A cynical yet secular shiny retrogamer, thread ressurector and fan of the word "gay".
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Re: Anyone remember the "good ole days" of hardware?
[Re: Trebor]
#277551 - 02/27/12 11:15 PM
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Quote:
> My first computer was a commodore VIC-20. The cassete player/recorder was not very
> compact...
Ditto. Loved the Scott Adam Adventures on cart though. Also it had some decent Arcade ports and 'clones'. Cosmic Cruncher was like a Pac-Man/Clean Sweep hybrid to me.
Prior to the PCjr I used my cousin's TRS-80 CoCo. I'd hack around with that, modding programs and using its cassette drive. Funny how the official term for those audio cassettes was "CompactCassette" since there were indeed more compact than say open reel-to-reel magnetic tape. But the recorder was much bigger. Though for the TRS-80 it was your usual Radio Shack cassette player/recorder.
Between computing sessions at my cousin's house I'd amaze them by seeing how many time I could flip the score in Space Invaders for their Atari 2600. I knew how to "fry" A2600 carts and knew how to get double-shots in Space Invaders through that kind of experimentation (hold down reset while turning the power on).
But once I got the PCjr he'd want to come on over and play around. Cool stuff. We both eventually got NES consoles and we also played and traded. Great weekend geeky gaming stuff! :-)
--Bekki
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Combating functional illiteracy with latex-clad drama since the '80s, because old video games rule!
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