Welcome to the Prefix wars [WAS:RE: Weekly Classic Computer Trivia Question (20141205)]

[Fred Cisin]

On Sun, 7 Dec 2014, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> Oh, it started before the Mac.  Consider, for example, the Technical
> Reference for the IBM PC (first edition).  Clear as day, it talks about
> memory expansion options of "256K".  Even so, consider older CP/M
> machines--many of them used the memory available in the signon as "XXK"

I remember some booth staff at West Coast Computer Faire (1979?)
trying to tell me that their computer with 65.5K of RAM was better
than the competition's 64K.

It was certainly well established by the time of TRS80/Apple][/Pet.
(4K,16K,48K, . . . )

> It probably goes back well into the 60s talking about so many
> "kilowords" of memory or mass storage.