Printable View
I found this video today, and thought it was pretty interesting. The hard drive he's dissecting is a IBM server hard drive from the late 70's - early 80's and cost over $250,000 new. In it's 9 beautiful platters inside, it contains a whopping 10 megs of data storage. I thought it was interesting, so I thought some of y'all e-waste guys would think it was pretty cool.
The video is 45 minutes long, so to see the inside skip to around the 8:45 mark.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBjoWMA5d84
My first computer I purchased with the money I made mowing lawns, I used to charge 5 dolars a lawn, and the computer cost me just over $5,000. I was 12 years old, it was 1979, I purchased an NEC 8801 with 8 inch and 5 1/4 inch floppies with a 150 BPS acoustic coupler modem that you had to dial the rotary phone, then strap the hand receiver to the modem with a piece of velcro. At the time the salesman was trying to convince me to purchase a 1 megabyte Winchester drive. It was as long as a shoebox, and about half the height and 3/4 the width. I will never forget him telling me that it was all the drive space I would ever need, and all just for $1000 dollars.
That's not even enough memory to hold my current phone list, or load a web page in today's world.
NMW - Fast forward 5 years to 1984. I spent $2500 for a Tandy 1000 with an 8088 processor and 128 KB of memory, a 512 kilobyte memory expansion module for a grand total of 640 KB of memory; not 1 but 2 - 5 1/4" floppy drives, a 9x12 pin Dot Matrix printer and an RGB (color) monitor. Later, I bought my first hard drive - salesman told me I would never need more than a 10 MEGABYTE HDD. Fast forward to today - my new Blackberry Z10 has more computing power than what went to moon in the first landing module and the Saturn rocket combined, and it only cost me $140.00. My how times have changed.
This is my first time ever hearing about an 8" floppy drive.
yeah...my first computer was a Commodore 64. I remember when the 128 came out and we debated on whether or not to get it. Then...I bought a Gateway. It came in like 4 or 5 boxes...Ah...the memory of the sound of the modem dialing in for an hour and it be busy....
They looked like a 33 rpm record only thinner and in a permanent jacket. With that in mind, we had a couple of recent high school grads helping us at our annual e-waste amnesty day recently. One had never seen a VHS tape rewinder and another had no clue what a stereo turntable was. Sure made me feel old. I remember playing 78 rpm records on my old RCA record player that also had a "Wire recorder" built in. Not magnetic tape, but a thin wire that it recorded on. Those were the days!Quote:
Originally Posted by 41haikuwarriors
Yeah...I picked up an 8-track player that still works along with about 10 or 15 cassettes. My kids are amazed.
If anyone wants to relive their childhood computer days, I have 2 Commodore 64 systems and a Tandy computer in my garage. Send me an offer :)
I think our first computer was an HP bought around '93 or '94, before that all i ever did was play that "Lawnboy" (or whatever it was called) game at school on Fridays.
And of course typing class.
Gravitar
Thanks for sharing!
shendog
I will pm you about the Commodore 64.
I have several Commodore 64's and an Atari computer as well, so if shendog sells his, I'll sell you mine.Quote:
Originally Posted by shendog
I love me some commodore stuff.