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From those of us who've been around for awhile, this is amazing...

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JohnRBaker

JohnRBaker

Mechanical
Jun 1, 2006
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I just saw this advert on Woot.

Screen_Shot_2020-08-25_at_7.39.15_AM_ifj1mk.png


They're selling 8GB memory boards for $25 each, which works out to just over $3 per Gigabyte.

The first computer that I was allowed to actually touch, as in starting it in the morning and shutting it down at night, had only 128 KILObytes of memory, and it supported four terminals running CAD/CAM software. The computer system, terminals, plotter, printer, tape-drives (both magnetic and paper tape), disc-drive and the software, cost over $400K (in 1977 dollars). And back then, we were leading edge in every way that you could imagine.

And now, the Apple Watch on my wrist has 8GB of memory, my iPad has 64GB, my iPhone has 256GB and my Macbook Pro, while it has 16GB of main memory, it has a 512GB SSD drive and externally I have another seven TERAbytes of storage. I can remember the first time a customer asked whether our systems could manage a Terabyte of data and we thought that they were getting a little ahead of themselves.

Heck, my pacemaker probably has more memory than that first mainframe that I used back in the later 70's.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
Wow! THAT MUCH memory? I bought a CPM80 machine because it had double the memory of the base model IBM PC with 32K of memory. My first HD-based computer had a 30 MB Winchester, and a friend laughed at me for spending the $330 for such an exorbitant amount of HD; about two weeks later, he apologized, since his swapmeet purchase of two 5MB HDs got filled up in one evening's worth of transferring data from his floppy collection.

We had an HP200 microcomputer that we spent about $1k for an extra 1MB RAM board because our "free" HP semiconductor parameter extraction program required 2 MB of memory to run.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
But that first computer that I was talking about, it was the size of two full-sized refrigerators standing next to each other:

DG_Eclipse_dbqpac.jpg


John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
Just goes to show how bloated and inefficient our software has become.

----------------------------------------

The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
 
Well, back in the old days, only a single application could be up and running at any one time. Also, back in those days, we still had file cabinets filled with paper and mailboxes stuffed with memos and reports.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
I bought an expansion memory card for my first S-100 PolyMorphic.
8 K for $300, second hand.
At that price, 8GB of memory would have cost $300,000,000 and required 1,000,000 boards, each about 5 inches by 14 inches.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
 
Yes, I know what you mean, going back to that first computer that I talked about earlier, it arrived with 128 kilobytes of memory. Now these were ferrite-core memory boards, which were something like 14 inches wide.

core-board_upaive.png


Each board held 8K of memory so it took 16 boards, or an entire computer rack, to hold the 128K. About a year later we upgraded the system so that we could support two additional terminals. They swapped out the 16 8K boards, replacing them with TWO 128K boards, giving us 256K total. Now these were still those big 14 inch boards just that now there was a single CMOS microchip mounted in the center of each of them. The system ran much cooler after that and even with two additional users logged-on, the increase in performance and response time was phenomenal.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
I can (sort of) remember an ad in a late ‘70s computer magazine for a souped up IMSI (I think) with a whole meg of on-board memory.
 
Yes, we had a PDP 8 but that was used only by the manufacturing people to program NC machine tools. That system was obsoleted once we installed the CAD/CAM system as the NC tapes could now be created using the new software.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
My first purchased computer was an AST 286... and I debated whether to get a 30MB or 40MB hard drive. I went big. I had an old dual height 80MB MFM drive that my programmer buddy paid over $6000 for... I kept it until about 20 years back as an oddity... Just recently purchased a Seagate external 10GB for about $250... my first 'large' drive was 475MB MFM that cost about $500, decades ago... Currently using M.2 drives in all my machines... 3 desktops and 2 laptops... I've got to stress test my recent laptop so I can take it apart and install a second M.2 in it... ordered it with 256GB and have a 2TB to go into it (It has two M.2 sockets just like two of my desktops). My old desktop is about 6 or 8 years old... and was my first M.2 drive... had to order it from Australia; they didn't have M.2 in North America yet.

Dik
 
There hasn't been a mother board built that uses DDR3 in something like 8 years. This is two generations old.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy, consulting work welcomed
 
Yea, I've still got an old 256MB memory stick sitting in the same drawer where I keep several 32GB sticks.

But speaking of bargains in technology compared to what was the norm years ago, I was at COSTCO today and I happened to walk down the aisle where the school/office supplies were and I saw this display:

IMG_1030_nzpyll.jpg


I paid $120 for my first handheld calculator back in 1973 and it was a long way from anything like this.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
Mine was a TI also. I think it was this one, but not sure:

414664_njn1vv.jpg


John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
Mine does everything but talk nice to me... For a programmable calculator two big oversights... you cannot call a function from within a function and you cannot graph a line from P(x,y,z) to P(x,y,z)...I had an Architect tell me once that you should not buy a calculator where the manual is bigger than the calculator. Should have added 64MB RAM and 100MB flash ROM driven by a 68000 processor.

IMG_20200826_155652_lnxdr5.png


Dik
 
ohh... Someone else with an nSpire. Bought one for my son 6 yrs ago for high school. Interestingly, it's still about the same price as when I bought it at $150, but it's got some cool features, which hardly anyone actually uses, such live-calculation notebook, but it seemed to me to be really only doable on a computer. The CAS version shown in Dik's photo is kind of a second cousin to Mathcad.

Chews up batteries pretty quickly...

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
I recharge it often... really neat feature, I can open up a new document, giving it a project number and can do calculations in the file and save it... I can then save the data to a computer file. I often do this for project calculations for the numerous small projects I do rather than actually have calculation 'notes'. The 68000 processor really uses up a lot of power... I likely have 4 or 5 binders of calculator manuals... I was really disappointed in the programming TI Basic... It has the 'snorts' that you could write a FEM or frame analysis program for it.

Dik
 
Got an HP-21 for Christmas in 1975. One time when having birthday and Christmas 2 weeks apart paid off, was able to have it as a Birthday/Christmas present when it would have been too expensive for either alone. Developed a collection of HP calculators, but the true survivor is the original HP-15C, the one with the US serial number rather than the Singapore serial number. Several years ago when they (somebody being an imposter) offered a re-release version of the HP-15C I bit, but although I still use it as well it isn't nearly as well made as the original. I was working at HP Corvallis in the summer of 1982 when the 15C was introduced and was able to make an employee purchase a few days before the official release. The main production was in Singapore, but the prototypes were all built in Corvallis.
 
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