3 May
2024
3 May
'24
9:32 p.m.
Quick Basic and I seem to recall all or most of M$ Quick compilers were released at 99$
US. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. As I think on it maybe QB i itially was 150$.
Those were the cheap compilers I was referring to. By 1987/88 the cost was less then 1/2 a
week's take home earnings no matter what you did. I found QB 3 at a computer show in
1990 and it wasn't much at all, maybe 25$.
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On Friday, May 3rd, 2024 at 9:40 AM, Peter Corlett via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Fri, May 03, 2024 at 02:51:06AM +0000, Just Kant
via cctalk wrote:
BASICs available at bootup were nice, but really
were only useful with 8
bit micros. IBM ROM BASIC was hobbled until you ran BASICA from disk. And
if you had a floppy it only made sense to buy a cheap compiler (Quick
Basic, Turbo Basic, etc.). Whatever you were missing by not dropping
4-500$ for a full product probably wasn't worth the expense.
A bit of perspective: the equivalent of $400-500 (~£200-250) was a couple of
weeks salary in the UK at the time. Unless it could be written-off as a
business expense, the purchase of that "cheap" compiler just wasn't
happening.