7 Mar
2013
7 Mar
'13
1:27 p.m.
Fred Cisin wrote on Thu, 7 Mar 2013 09:31:25 -0800 (PST):
I still maintain that
"cheapest 1980s $100/cheapest 1990s $2000"
is either comparing two different categories of computers (as time
goes on, our interests do change), OR is looking at some very VERY
odd category of computers! (perfectly reasonable, IFF category is
identified!)
Either bare machine (including RPI) or "full system" are valid
subsets, but comparisons of them require appropriate adjustments.
I agree completely - my original comparison was absurdly unfair. You
mentioned that our interests change over time, but so does what most
people want. In the same way I discounted used computers saying poor
people didn't want them (like all generalizations, I am sure it is easy
to find examples of people who did buy used machines), I also did not
take into account low end computers that were rejected by the general
public.
For example: in Brazil the low end in 1983 to 1985 were clones of the
Sinclair machines. In 1986/1987 these were still available in the
market, but most people who bought them did so due to ignorance (a
parent buying a machine for his kid and having no idea that a Sinclair
Spectrum and an Apple II had any differences, for example) and the real
low end were now the (much more expensive) MSX computers. By 1989 the
MSX were now the cheapest for sale, but people ignored them because they
wanted to run at home the same applications they used at work, and that
meant a PC.
Thanks, by the way, for the other very detailed reply. I should indeed
do a proper survey showing what was available each year and adjusting
the prices to take inflation into account. The bulk of my information
for the USA market in those years were from issues of Computer Shopper
(which I no longer have) and the ads at the back of Byte Magazine (which
I can dig out). I probably won't have time to do this in the next couple
of months, unfortunately.
I like to claim that my first real computer was the university's
Burroughs B6700, but of course that wasn't mine at all. Not counting
programmable calculators, my first few computers were: home built
videogame console with the Signetics 2650 processor (1979), Motorola
MEK6800D2 development kit (128 bytes of RAM, 1980), Sinclair ZX81 (USA
version, 1982), Texas Instruments TI99/4A (1982), home built Apple II
clone (1984), Apple 128K Macintosh (soon expanded to 512K, 1986),
Unitron Turbo Mac 512 clone (1988), generic 386 40MHz PC (1993). I still
have about half of these. There were also the machines I designed
myself, some of which can be seen here:
http://www.merlintec.com/swiki/hardware/album.html
-- Jecel