Why did microcomputers die off?

On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 1:49 PM, BE Arnold <bearnold at outlook.com> wrote: I was a wee lad when the S-100 was at its peak. My parents had a couple of different friends who owned S-100 machines (one was a Northstar Horizon, I remember specifically), but I was going down to the public library and using PETs for free an hour a week (via signup sheet - one box per sheet, but you could stick around if nobody kicked you off, so I learned when the advantageous times were and routinely got 2-3 hours). Initially, we were going to get an 8K PET, but by the time I saved up enough to contribute half, the 8K was retired, so we got a 32K PET instead for $1100 (my contribution was 1/3). I still have it. It still works. I spent many, many hours on it before moving up to the Commodore 64 a few years later. I too drooled over the ads but the prices were so high even for a 16K S-100 system with a single floppy that it was never going to happen. I would have loved to have had a floppy for the PET, but they cost more than the CPU! I got good at managing a double-shoebox of cassettes. -ethan