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40th anniversary of the IBM PC 5150

Dust covers are for wimps. Layers of dust add protection to these old things. If its not covered in layers of my families dead skin and mites and random sketchy hairs its just not vintage........

And Spiders.. Spiders act as muscle patrolling and keeping the insides of your vintage tech safe from lesser creatures.... like Deskthority folks.
 
I don't think that younger people can really get a grasp on how expensive this stuff was at one time relative to income. Examples of things that I remember the prices of:

My first Mouse, serial, for windows 1.0: $100 or 150 (maybe 1985 dollars)?

1983-1984 time frame:
360K floppies for my XT clone, $160 each (Teac's, HH, really good, cast aluminum frames, I got a real deal on them at the time)
CRAPPY PC/XT clone keyboard, $180
5MB full height MFM drive, $400 (was a bargain at the time, and they were on allocation and very hard to get, period)
Genuine IBM parallel port board (only) $75 - I think there were eight chips max on it
Cable for above: $50
 
I think the last hard drive I spent good money on was around 1996 or 1997. A quantum bigfoot 6.4GB 5.25" hdd. Large capacity but slow, I paid around $335.00 for it. Ever since I have used used hard drives from work or cheapo ones I can find with big discounts. My days of spending real money on a modern computer are far far gone.. why bother at this point?!
 
VERAULT said:
I think the last hard drive I spent good money on was around 1996 or 1997. A quantum bigfoot 6.4GB 5.25" hdd. Large capacity but slow, I paid around $335.00 for it. Ever since I have used used hard drives from work or cheapo ones I can find with big discounts. My days of spending real money on a modern computer are far far gone.. why bother at this point?!
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I spent tons of cash for computer gear in the 1990's, these days I just use older gear you can find cheap or free and it works fine.
 
Slob said:
I don't think that younger people can really get a grasp on how expensive this stuff was at one time relative to income.
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Why do you think so? Remember, IBM was the biggest player in the hardware business for professionals back then. Buying an IBM PC was like buying an Apple Mac Pro today. And I would guess a fully equipped Mac Pro is even more expensive compared to income than the IBM PC was in 1981. :D
 
In the early 80's it hurt to buy RAM for my PC, it look a long time to build it to 640K, OUCH!!!! 1st SSDD floppy drive was $500, My dad scolded me when I got a 20MB hard drive, said, "I would never fill it up and was a waste of money".
 
Man, the expense of this stuff back then....

In the 80's, seeing any IBM PC product around was a sure fire way to know you were either in a business, or at the house of someone in a high socio-economic bracket. These things cost as much as a cheap economy car, and some of them cost as much as a base model light truck fully equipped. That's how I'm shocked by these tales from people 10 years my senior who were teens in the late 80's/early 90's cobbling together BBSes with old PCs, XTs, and ATs and somehow procuring such hardware from schools and junk bins somehow.

And I remember the attitudes of the average "end user" back then. Today, these people don't know where the power button is but can receive their e-mail and treat the computer like they treat their cell phone, or worse. Back then....good god, me as an 8 year old at the Tandy 1000 SX? "Don't touch F1, you'll break it!" "Don't use these disks - you'll break them!" "Don't touch the printer, you'll break it!" It was like, if you were a kid in a household with a computer in the 80's or 90's, you basically were guided on an experience on rails because these things were so expensive to fix.

Honestly, if I could get in a time machine and go be an I.T. guy in the 80's-early 90's, I would in a heartbeat. I remember one repair to my sister's 386 cost $60 - to edit a file in DOS Edit that got corrupted - something I do all the time for free. I want to make $60/hr with 1hr guarantee!
 
Unknown_K said:
I spent tons of cash for computer gear in the 1990's, these days I just use older gear you can find cheap or free and it works fine.
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I like to quip that if I spent as much money as I did on computer equipment back in the day instead on woodworking tools, not only would I have a better setup than Norm Abrahm, I'd still have all the tools and they'd still all work.
 
whartung said:
I like to quip that if I spent as much money as I did on computer equipment back in the day instead on woodworking tools, not only would I have a better setup than Norm Abrahm, I'd still have all the tools and they'd still all work.
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Aint that the truth!!!
 
Ruud said:
Did you prove him wrong? :)
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A single image from my camera is over 40MB's today. It became a race to see who would buy the next bigger drive. I won... Got a metal cabinet covered in old HD magnets.

Turned my early 5150 on today and booted CPM 1.0 cool...
 
I once took a plane ride back to Raleigh from a computer show in Boston in the 90's with one of the guys that built the 5150 board at IBM. They used off-the-shelf parts, just trying to lash something together fast that worked. No one else at IBM took the PC "revolution" seriously when it was getting started.
 
framer said:
A single image from my camera is over 40MB's today. It became a race to see who would buy the next bigger drive. I won... Got a metal cabinet covered in old HD magnets.

Turned my early 5150 on today and booted CPM 1.0 cool...
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CP/M 86 i take it?
 
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