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Vintage Computers Any vintage computer systems, calculators, video games etc., but with an emphasis on 1980s and earlier equipment.

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Old 30th Jun 2014, 11:44 pm   #41
Lloyd 1985
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Default Re: Prices in 1996

We still make equipment with tape drives fitted where I work!! LTO6 I think it's called, somewhere just over 1TB storage on them, and they are slow!! Good for backups though I suppose, which is pretty much it's intended use in our stuff.

Lloyd.
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Old 2nd Jul 2014, 4:56 am   #42
Billy T
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In the mid '70s I went from a technical position to an office environment and shortly afterwards the Branch purchased its first 'word processor' It cost megabucks and was a large console with keyboard and a display window that offered a single line of orange nixie (or similar display) text characters, might have been an early individual-led matrix as it was very coarse. I think it was an Olivetti but I wouldn't fight a libel case over that.

If I recall correctly, it had a huge disk drive that took massive floppy disks. These were real-deal 'floppies as they lived in a paper sheath and had to be handled with kid gloves.

It turned out to be a purchase that was before its time, but past its use-by date (smooth salesmanship was the problem) and it was soon replaced by an ICL mini-mainframe with several green-screen terminals and somewhat smaller (8") floppy disks. Printing was to a typewriter device of some sort and it too cost megabucks.

That machine actually gave good service and I still have the A3 dot-matrix printer used to print out lists, and a few of the floppy disks. We also had a fax machine that used peculiar pink paper that faded to nothing within few months. The photocopier was the same, which was great when you opened a file and found a blank sheet staring up at you!

In 1984 I started my business with a second hand 486DX33 for $2,000 and a Canon inkjet printer that cost me the same. I'm now on my 4th computer and looking to move up to my fifth, so it seems that the average computer life expectancy for me is 7.5 years.

Cheers

Billy
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Old 2nd Jul 2014, 2:38 pm   #43
Paul Stenning
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Default Re: Prices in 1996

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Originally Posted by Billy T View Post
In 1984 I started my business with a second hand 486DX33 for $2,000 and a Canon inkjet printer that cost me the same. I'm now on my 4th computer and looking to move up to my fifth, so it seems that the average computer life expectancy for me is 7.5 years.
You either have the date or the CPU wrong as the 486 family wasn't introduced until 1989 (and that particular version in 1990). 286 CPUs were the latest type in 1984.

Dates from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80486
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Old 2nd Jul 2014, 5:22 pm   #44
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When I started work at ITN in 1983 they had just bought a Vax 11/780 for graphics and elections work. It had cost just over £300,000, and those were 1982 pounds. It needed 3 phase power and a fully air conditioned machine room. I think it had 4MB of memory and supported about 15 users at any one time.
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Old 2nd Jul 2014, 8:45 pm   #45
kellys_eye
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My PC history started with the ETI Magazine 'Transam Triton' computer in 1978(9?), the kit of parts for which cost me £300 (£1600 in todays filthy lucre).

256 BYTEs of RAM and a Basic OS in 2k ROM.....

I took that PC everywhere - including with me as a Radio Officer at sea - where developed my assembly language skills.

I recently threw away the original ETI magazine with the article in.... d'oh.
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Old 10th Jul 2014, 10:04 am   #46
cheerfulcharlie
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Default Re: Prices in 1996

Meanwhile from what I gather Microsoft are giving away a few of these.

http://www.windowsondevices.com/

If you sign up you might be lucky?
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Old 14th Jul 2014, 2:54 pm   #47
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Default Re: Prices in 1996

Unfortunately, from the FAQ on the site it looks like they are already oversubscribed so there are no more freebies for now :-( . Even if you could buy the Gallileo board they are still "evaluating how to scale this program once [they’ve] worked with the early adopters." so it would appear that although you can still sign up, you can't do anything useful at the moment except wait for more information.

That having been said, perhaps they will expand the programme and a few more people will get the development kit.
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Old 16th Jul 2014, 12:02 am   #48
gavinhall
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We had a DEC VAX at Fleetlands, must have been around 88 and was about 5 or 6 cabinets. The 3 phase was only for the cabinet fans I thought. It was replaced with a microVAX which sat in the same place but looked sort of lost as it was a lot smaller. I left in around 96 so I've no idea what's there now.
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Old 16th Jul 2014, 8:47 pm   #49
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The first 'serious' professional computer I got to drive was a GEC 4190

http://www.cucumber.demon.co.uk/gecc...rocessors.html

I also ran various GEC4160 systems as packet-switches and suffered the dreaded CDC "Lark" removable-cartridge-hard-drive failures.

It's amazing to think that the 4190 systems had three CDC 80Mbyte removable-platter hard-drives as storage: one to store the operating-system, one as swap- and spool-space, and one as user-space. We had a number of "SIGMEX" vector-drawing high-resolution terminals [driven using the "Graphical Kernel System" - GKS - programming standards over 19.2Kbps RS232 serial-links!] hooked to the 4190 - on this we overlaid weather-maps and plots of airborme/submarine 'things'...

Fascinating to think that in the 1980s this was a multi-million-pound system - which today could be happily run faster on a £150 smartphone.
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Old 16th Jul 2014, 10:34 pm   #50
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Default Re: Prices in 1996

QUOTE "and suffered the dreaded CDC "Lark" removable-cartridge-hard-drive failures"
Yes I remember those.

Where the CDC 80Mbyte removable drives the ones with the 14 inch diameter 5 plater disks? SMD (A and B cable) interface?
Frank
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Old 17th Jul 2014, 9:20 am   #51
G6Tanuki
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Were the CDC 80Mbyte removable drives the ones with the 14 inch diameter 5 plater disks? SMD (A and B cable) interface?
Yes - the CDC 9762. Packs had smoked-perspex covers that you screwed down on top then continued screwing them down to release the platter-stack from the drive. clack.. clack... clack... then pulled upwards and snapped on a plastic lower cover.

Drives are still available [with 40-day warranty] for nearly $4000!

http://www.mbiusa.com/mbi_cdc9762.htm
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Old 17th Jul 2014, 3:35 pm   #52
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They did the 300Mbyte as well, the size of a washing machine, same 14 inch platters with the Perspex screw down cover with 10? Platters. They had I think 20 heads, 19 data 1servo, I should remember, I aligned enough of them. Both types of drive had a "Pick" signal available, if there were drives daisy chained, the next drive would not start the motor until the first one dropped the start winding. Those 300Mbyte drives could draw 20 odd amps on start up dropping to 8amp running.
Frank
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Old 22nd Sep 2014, 12:18 pm   #53
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Default Re: Prices in 1996

I recall looking at "sale price" computers in the late 80s and the cheapest I could find was over £800 - way out of my price range. I bought my first laptop in 2007 for about £500 and it does loads more things than most 80s computers could do.
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