On Tue, 13 May 2008 04:26:09 +0000, Larry <noone@home.com> wrote:

>Ron <ronclifford@peoplepc.com> wrote in
>news:imth24ptf4u84qlb4c38tcv3vna59htij6@4ax.com :
>
>> I remember paying $200 for 16K of Ram back in 1980, and paying $300
>> for 1 Meg of Ram in 1987.
>>
>>
>
>Which computer, Ron? I had the Southwest Tech Products and built several
>S-100 bus beasts. These kids would be horrified.
>
>.....Then some smartass came out with the $250 25ma teletype interface!
>I still have paper tape machine language programs in a drawer around here
>somewhere....(c;
>
>As long as we're in "confession mode"....I once paid $2,295 for a 33MB,
>full height, Tulin 4-platter hard drive for my IBM-PC XT from Crazy Bob's
>Computer Warehouse in Atlanta.....$200 off!
>
>It was the largest PC drive on the market and I just HAD to have one!
>
>The drive is gone, but I still have the receipt....(c;
>
>I paid $2,495 for the Compaq Portable PC with its twin 720KB floppy
>drives, 64KB of RAM and 9" GREEN screen from Sears Computer Center in
>Jacksonville, FL. The keyboard fit right into the bottom of the sewing
>machine case! It only weighed as much as a Singer, too!
>
>I'd be afraid to add up what I've wasted on computer hardware and
>software since 1980.....too scary to even contemplate....I made Silicon
>Valley's house payments many times....
>
>But, alas, it's been one helluva great ride!
>
>Clipper was the Dbase III COMPILER for the PCXT that made Dbase III haul
>ass. My license number was 2400 out of the millions of copies sold...(c;
>
>I was also an Ohio Scientific computer dealer, the FIRST microcomputer
>with a real 74MB, 14" platter fixed hard drive in commercial production.
>OS-65u with extended BASIC on its 6502 processor.....or you could run
>CP/M on its Z-80.....or whatever the hell you wanted on its Motorola
>6800....(c;
>...all in a 19" rack about 18" high with dumb serial terminals we bought
>from a local manufacturer in Columbia, SC, 30 miles from home.
>
>We wrote custom BASIC software for the vending machine industry to track
>machine production, inventory products and track the truck productions.
>Quite something for those days....
>
>Remember the first time you pressed RUN, the lights went crazy with
>output, then you had to step through the "results" and read the 8 light
>bulbs to find out what it did?....(c;

I dont go back THAT far.
>
>.....and couldn't sleep for days because it didn't did what you wanted it
>to did?!

I did have 2 boxes of punch cards to do statistical analysis in 1970,
and wrote a program in Fortran to do text plots of statistical
log probabilities. I never lost sleep, my programs worked.

Published in 1973 in the Journal of Sedimentary Petrology.


>
>......................................Linux is easy....................

My picture was in a National Magazine as the leading edge of the home
computer revolution, as in 1983; we had 2 computers in our home;
one for the kiddos, and one for the parents.

But the children couldnt touch the computer till all their homework
was done, and couldn't play games on computer, till they had done 30
minutes of math drills I had programmed in Basic.

Must of worked, they both graduated college Phi Beta Kappa
with 3.9+ GPAs; after having full academic scholarships.