??? 06/21/00 19:45 Read: times |
#3344 - Codeasaurus Rex |
Martin, Good idea... maybe someone should start, "www.oldtech.com"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Speaking of old technology, here's what was available when Bill Gates was only the youngest and dorkiest programmer at the Altair MITS Co.: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The first home computer I bought was a S-100 bus Z-80 based Cromemco Z2 Model. This was 1978. It initially had: (1) a 4Mhz Z-80 processor board $200. This was the latest fast technology (2) 2 8Kbyte 250ns sram boards $300 each (3) B&W 320x200 Graphics board $400. This was a Miniterm Merlin - GREAT! I could type hex directly into the memory through a bootup monitor and the graphics card had a resident graphics BASIC ROM with many well documented monitor entrypoints. I hand-assembled my code (I didn't know what assemblers were or they weren't yet available - heheheh) I later added to it: (4) Wirewrapped sound card. $??? (5) Northstar floppy drive $650 (6) EPROM burner $150 (7) 300 baud DCHayes modem $330 (8) Graphics Impact Printer $1,100 When I powered this computer up, the electromagnetic noise was so bad all TV recepetion in the house was knocked out. The neighbors probably thought their reception was bad due to amateur radio transmitters in the neighborhood. :-) -Jay C. Box |