15 Sep
2002
15 Sep
'02
6:05 a.m.
On Sat, 14 Sep 2002, Loboyko Steve wrote:
I marvel at how well the HP2644A I have is built. But
really, did it
have to be built so well that it would be working 27 years later, long
after it was obsolete? The original purchaser paid for a lot more than
they used. HP used to make the best stuff. But if they still made stuff
that way, they would be out of business. Such is the world we live in.
The field of computing was much different in the 1970s than it is today.
We don't take for granted the fact that next month the chip manufacturers
will squeeze another couple hundred megahertz of performance out of the
latest whiz bang CPU. Computers were built to last for a long time
because they had to. A $1,000 computer investment in the 70s was
considerably more money than it is today, and that probably bought you a
dumb terminal.
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *