PC Ephemera - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

26 Oct 2005

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Subject: RE: PC Ephemera
   From: "Richard A. Cini" <rcini at optonline.net>
   Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2005 21:50:49 -0400
     To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'"	<cctalk
at classiccmp.org>

I actually have one of these. My wife's uncle worked at IBM and bought the
PC and the expansion unit "way back when". It was a PC case with a backplane
and the interface card, connected by a 3' shielded cable which IMHO was way
too stiff for normal use. This unit has a 20mb hard drive in it and the last
time I used it (3-4 years ago) it worked fine.

If $2850 was the original price, that's a rip off. It's an empty PC case, a
backplane, power supply and an ISA card. $400 in parts at the most. 
Well in 1983 a SA400L was still a 199$ item, The "kit" from intel 
(8284A, 8088, 8255, 8253 and 8259) was 12$/Q10,000.  DRAMS 64K were still
up the price curve 8$/10,000.  Large Eproms 8Kx8 2764 or the big 27128 
were not cheap either. The raw 765A was around 5$/Q1000.  The board was 
covered with TTL and a few PALs. Monitors were over 100$ for monochrome
and color was around 400$.

Yes, they were stinking expensive.  Then again at the same time even a 
NS* machine loaded (48k two drives, no hard disk) was around 1600$.

Allison