Looking back on the past 20 odd years...

[Kev Murphy]

Seems strange, on looking back...
How technology has advanced .... in Feb of 1995, I bought my first WINDOWS OS computer. (128Kb ram)
Back then, it used to cost $100 for 1 MEG of ram (4x256 Kb sticks)... I now have 16,000 MEG (or 1.6 million dollars worth , at the old price)
3 and a half inch floppy disks were the bees knees.. with 1.44 MEGabytes storage capacity. (at almost $4 each)

Compare that to a DVD nowadays, which may only cost 25 cents or so from Aldi, with 4.7 GIG of storage... or a BluRay disk, with 25 GIG.
Nowadays, I walk around the streets with 200 Gigabytes of storage on 3 USB sticks dangling from my keys.
An external hard drive of 20 MEG capacity on my previous computer cost me $550, in 1992.
in 1997, a 1.7 GIG hard drive was as big as you could get.. (and cost around $440.)
Nowadays I download files of that size, daily, within 10 minutes.
I now have 15 TERRABYTES of storage on my present computer. (Yep, thats 15,000 GIGABYTES !) ... and about to add another 4 Tbytes because I am running out of room.

Compare the computer capabilities of today, with the prices of 20 years ago, and realise that it would have cost several millions of dollars for that laptop or desktop that we now all own.

Not everything in life drops in price like this...

"Join the club, Join the club, Join the ESCORT club, ... 34 cents, and you're a member...." (Pack of 20)

Today, ciggys are around 75, 80 cents EACH!.... or over 93 cents each if bought from a servo!

[Diesel]

Now that is a GREAT POST thanks Kev.   


I am going to madly look around the house for any old Ram sticks to flog!       


Escorts were the very first pack of durries I ever bought. Dad smoked Craven A Cork Tipped.


Cheers, Diesel

[Biggles]

You're both too hardcore for me!  I was an effete Alpine smoker.  And loved 'em.

And my first 'puter was a Vic20 with 3.5kb on board.  I bought a 16kb extension board for it.  I saved my programs to reel-to-reel cassettes.  It took around 10 minutes to save a 16kb program.
The second was an Apple 2e with the 5.25" floppy drive that stored 350kb (IIRC) on really floppy disks, not like the top-of-the range later arriving 1.44mb in a rigid plastic case.  I quickly got out of Apple (forever) and my first Pentium had a massive 40mb hard drive.  Cost me thousands back in the mid-90s.  When the "internet" came to PNG via a Bulletin Board, I was thankful to get 9600 kbps after much whistling and hash noise from the modem.


edit for floppy disk size- couldn't remember 5.25", thanks Steve and Brock.
The sleeves were actually a black plastic sheath with a friction modifying soft paper lining- never saw a cardboard one.

[Old Steve]

You guys seem to forget that the term "floppy disc" described the original 5 1/4" floppy discs - they had a cardboard sleeve and were actually floppy.  On our first home PC (can't remember how much RAM/ROM we had on that one), we fitted both 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" floppy disc drives and our friends thought we were at the technology forefront having a drive for those new tiny hard cased 3 1/2" discs.

[Brock]

I too had a Vic20, followed by a C128. Still have the 128 in the shed with Disc drive, monitor, printer and stack of discs

First PC was a 286DX33 with 1meg of RAM and a 40Meg hard drive and a 2xCD drive (no DVDs then) a 3.5" drive and 5.25 Floppy drive.  may even have some discs in the shed.

[alans1100]

My first computer was a Commodore 64 with the cassette tape drive for storage.

The first PC that I had anything to do with was a NEC with green screen and 20Mb hard-drive and had two 5 inch floppy drives (latest technology at that time). The teacher at the time said he couldn't see us needing anything larger

My first new PC was a Compaq with a massive 10GB hard drive, a 1.44 Mb floppy drive, CD drive and state of the art 5 speaker surround sound

We now have 2 all in one PCs with touch screens (1.5Tb and 1.0Tb) and one laptop (600Gb) and three tablets between us.

I gave up smoking when they got to $3 for a packet of 25 (Keating was treasurer).......

[Biggles]

I gave up smoking when they got to $3 for a packet of 25 (Keating was treasurer).......

Keating was treasurer up to 1991.  Say 23 years at maybe 3 packs per week = 3588 packs at $3 = $10764 in 1990 dollars.
1990 $3.0 = $5.43 according to the inflation calculator.
So a figure of $19,500 is within a bull's roar of what you've saved in 2014 dollars.
That doesn't take into account the tax on ciggies is much higher now, so it's not just inflation that has taken the price up.  You won't find any $5.43 packs of 20 in Oz.  Bali maybe.   

[Kev Murphy]

My very first computer was a Heathkit H8....1978... came in kitform, and had to be assembled... cost around $400. Extras, that were not included in the kit, had to be purchased separately... first was a 4Kb card.. I think it was SRAM? (another $150) and a serial card to control an external tape deck for storage. (Dig deep, that was another $100 for the card...and then the cassette deck, more $$$)... and THEN of course, you needed a video terminal... had only twelve lines of green upper case text on the screeen.... and a bank of switches as a keyboard...


 Was sort of like buying a very basic car, with optional extras, (at a cost) "You want seats?... front and back?... and a spare wheel?... maybe a steering wheel, too? Would you like an engine fitted as well?... do you have a gearbox, or would you like us to fit one for you?... do you have a windscreen?... we can do a very good deal on tyres, should you require them? and we have a large range of batteries to choose from, very handy if you want lights fitted, and would like to park with them switched on, or drive at night. We can also fit an electric starter motor, which can be used to start the engine, instead of having to manually crank it, or push start it?"

 


Commodore 64 was the next step, but that was around 1985 before I could afford that.

[alans1100]

I gave up smoking when they got to $3 for a packet of 25 (Keating was treasurer).......

Keating was treasurer up to 1991.  Say 23 years at maybe 3 packs per week = 3588 packs at $3 = $10764 in 1990 dollars.

I wish..........any saving made from giving up smoking was offset by the regular increase in fuel excise which used to happen back then

[Biggles]

My very first computer was a Heathkit H8....1978... came in kitform, and had to be assembled...

Wasn't there an Oz kit called "something Bee"?  I know a mate had one- similar set-up.  Reckoned I could run my little business back then with it.

My second computer (Apple II+, as I recall now, the 2e came later) had the green screen with dot matrix characters.  At least the Vic20 had colour!!

[Diesel]

<blockquote>
</blockquote>Wasn't there an Oz kit called "something Bee"?  I know a mate had one- similar set-up.  Reckoned I could run my little business back then with it.

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=microbee+computer&es_sm=122&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=_IzdVJ9-j_HyBY_WgYAB&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1680&bih=925

[Brock]

Microbee, and of course thr TRS80,  Sinclair ZX spectrum....

[Kev Murphy]

You guys seem to forget that the term "floppy disc" described the original 5 1/4" floppy discs - they had a cardboard sleeve and were actually floppy.  On our first home PC (can't remember how much RAM/ROM we had on that one), we fitted both 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" floppy disc drives and our friends thought we were at the technology forefront having a drive for those new tiny hard cased 3 1/2" discs.

The 5 and a quarter inch floppy had 180 Kb capacity... or 360 Kb, if double sided ... I think I still have some old ones somewhere in a box?

[Biggles]

I obviously had the Rolls Royce version with 360kb capacity.     
It wouldn't fit a low-res photo these days!

What a shame the Australian Microbee computer lost out in the competitive computer stakes.  They obviously were right up there with the big guys at the start.

[ST.George]

Ah, the nostalgia of it all. I was a self-employed software engineer until a heart attack opened my eyes to leave that sort of stress. I'll never forget tho, one system I bought and as I always did - I shopped around and got the best price - a Toshiba "portable". It had a fold-down Orange plasma screen (not colour), 2Mb RAM, 20Mb hard drive, 3.5 1.44 Mb hard floppy. No battery - had 2 b plugged in. That was about 1987.
$13,750!

[Kev Murphy]

The first hard disk drive, like so many innovations in computing, came from IBM in 1956. It was called the IBM Model 350 Disk File and was a huge device. It had 50 24-inch disks contained inside a cabinet that was more than twice the size of a refrigerator and anything but lightweight. This hulk of a storage unit could store a whopping 5 MB of data...just a little more capacity than 3 x 3 and a half inch floppy disks, but it was enough to handle all of New York's banking at the time.




It took 51 years before hard disk drives reached the storage capacity of 1 TB (terabyte, i.e. 1,000 GB). This happened in 2007. In 2009, the first hard drive with 2 TB of storage arrived. So while it took 51 years to reach the first terabyte, it took just two years to reach the second... and now 6 years on, Kingston has a 1Tb USB flash drive available.

[Philbo]

I was working for Telecom in the early 80s and we were supplied with a Wang computer, which none of us office staff knew how to work at first.  I'm pretty sure it had big floppy disks, about 8 inch or so.  The brief mention of PNG reminds me of a Datsun 1200 which my mate owned and which had been imported to PNG from Japan and then brought into Australia privately.  We ended up rolling the car in the ACT, with me in the back seat.  The rear window was normal glass, not heat tempered, and broke into large shards.  I was lucky not to be slashed.  How could a manufacturer put this on the market in PNG.  When manufacturers complain about the red tape in Australia, it is there to protect us from their profit mentality
Off my soap box now.
 

[Shaun]

Nice topic.

My first was a Tandy 1000, around 1988. 2 5.25" disk drives, so that when I copied discs, I didn't even need to remove the source disc to put in the destination disc!

No hard drive, I upgraded from a monochrome to an RGB monitor (4 colours) in 1990. It had 256K of RAM, which I saved up and upgraded to 384K. That was hard work for a 10 year old. I reckon I learned so much about what I know about these things by just tinkering, writing silly code in BASIC or Pascal, and playing text based adventure games.

A mate had an old Amstrad with the tape player. Clunky thing, but I remember he had some great games on it. I also remember my school had a small room between the two year 6 rooms that had microbees. I remember hearing somewhere that my primary school was one of the first to have a dedicated computer room.

[Shiney]

For a bit of a comparison...
I am doing an upgrade to my PC at the moment:
8 core, 4 GB CPU
32 GB ram
13 TB of internal hard drives.
10.5 TB of external hard drives.
And dual monitors.

When I first got in to computers I never thought they would ever advance this much.

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

[Skip]

I'm outta here. I've obviously logged on to the wrong site. I have no idea what you guys are even sayin'. This is all Dutch to me.
 

[Biggles]

How could a manufacturer put this on the market in PNG.  When manufacturers complain about the red tape in Australia, it is there to protect us from their profit mentality
Off my soap box now.

It's entirely probably it wasn't a factory glass.  In PNG the theft of windscreens and other vehicle glass was fairly common.  The windscreen of my Datson ute was cut out one night in my own front yard.  The thieves needed it because of the high incidence of rocks through windscreens in the country.  I put 1/8" steel strips pop riveted to the frame to stop the next one being pinched.
Ah, those were the days!     

[Biggles]

No hard drive, I upgraded from a monochrome to an RGB monitor (4 colours) in 1990. It had 256K of RAM, which I saved up and upgraded to 384K. That was hard work for a 10 year old. I reckon I learned so much about what I know about these things by just tinkering, writing silly code in BASIC or Pascal, and playing text based adventure games.

Now you're talking!  I used to type in BASIC games from computer magazines.  That was wonderful fun, especially when they worked!  And I loved playing those text based "adventure" games.  Simple pleasures that today's gamers wouldn't understand because there was no shooting or blood.

The knowledge I gained from the BASIC games I put to good use writing a navigation/ flight planning programme in Quickbas for the MS DOS.  It meant I only had to type in my landing points for the day, the refuelling points and time on ground at each destination and it would print it out onto a Flight Plan form that I could submit to Flight Service and have my day completely planned, including fuel required, tracks, distances, ETIs, ETAs and LSALTs.

[hendo68]

A mere 20 years ago I was still wotking and repairing magnetic core memory ( look it up if you dont know what it is) on one of works computers in a radar. At the same time one of our new fangled automated test sets was still using 8 inch floppies.

[Bikebear]

I was working for Telecom in the early 80s and we were supplied with a Wang computer, which none of us office staff knew how to work at first.  I'm pretty sure it had big floppy disks, about 8 inch or so.

I remember the computer I used in Telecom Australia in the mid 80s, it had an 8 inch floppy drive and we used to run Wordstar 2000 from the disk whenever we wanted to write a report. The printer was a dot matrix that took ages to print anything and sounded like it was going to fly apart at any time. We were stunned by how wonderful it all was.

Then of course there were the old Telex machines with the punched tape on which  we had to send reports to all stations every morning from Route Control.

I bought a second hand 286 machine in 1992 with 1.2 meg of RAM, 20mb hard drive and a 1.44 floppy drive and a CGA monitor. I had a game called Tank that I ran on it, at the time I thought the graphics were awesome. The whole thing cost $1900. 

Technology sure has come a long way all right.

[Biggles]

A mere 20 years ago I was still wotking and repairing magnetic core memory ( look it up if you dont know what it is) on one of works computers in a radar. At the same time one of our new fangled automated test sets was still using 8 inch floppies.

A very good article about it here:

http://www.corememoryshield.com/report.html