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No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265454] Thu, 28 August 2014 09:20 Go to next message
Anne & Lynn Wheel is currently offline  Anne & Lynn Wheel
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No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like
In 1984
http://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-what-tech-was-like-in -1984-2014-8

In fact, 1984 was 10 years before the World Wide Web (commonly called
the internet) was born. It was the year Ronald Reagan was re-elected as
president; the telephone monopoly Bell System was officially dismantled
and AT&T launched; and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, was
born.

.... snip ...

30yrs ago

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265455 is a reply to message #265454] Thu, 28 August 2014 09:40 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anne & Lynn Wheel is currently offline  Anne & Lynn Wheel
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re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#59 No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984

random email from 1984 to somebody at mit .... it answers question how
ibm san jose research datacenter was charging users ... also discusses
home/remote login ... guardian was a call-back screening system
.... callup, authenticate, hangup and it calls back the phone number on
file, logs in line-mode ascii, activates "PCTERM" service, logs off,
connects to "PCTERM" service that simulates 3270, and logs back on as
simulated 3270 (all automated).

Date: 4 Jan 1984 08:21:11-PST (Wednesday)
From: Lynn Wheeler
To: xxxxx@mit
Subject: sjr charging;

The formula for charging is based on cpu, sio, and possibly page i/o
consumption. system consumption units and the charge per system
consumption unit. There are additional charges for monthly minidisk
cylinder rental. I don't know what the current rate per unit is, but
PCTERM has negligible consumption while idle so the charge while idle
will be in the noise. Some "service bureaus" have a flat connect
charge, usually to cover things like line costs, modems, etc. By the
way, I've got a PCTERM exec that calls guardian (I've got a hayes
smartmodem), answers all its questions, hangs up, waits for the call
back, logs on in line mode, autologs my pcterm machine, gets off, and
dials my pcterm machine, and then logs back on. When invoked from
autoexec, i can power my machine on, and get all the way thru vm logon
w/o touching the keyboard, and I don't need a machine logged on all
the time.

.... snip ...

past posts mentioning pcterm ... and 3270 simulation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#7 3270 terminal keyboard??
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#44 Mainframe Emulation Solutions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#0 Why so little parallelism?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#66 The use of "script" for program
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#74 What do YOU call the # sign?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#51 Baudot code direct to computers?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#6 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#20 Writing article on telework/telecommuting
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#49 Before the Internet: The golden age of online service
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#71 The Tragedy of Rapid Evolution?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014i.html#11 The Tragedy of Rapid Evolution?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#25 another question about TSO edit command

other old email from 1984
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#1984


--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265465 is a reply to message #265454] Thu, 28 August 2014 10:29 Go to previous messageGo to next message
hancock4 is currently offline  hancock4
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On Thursday, August 28, 2014 9:20:22 AM UTC-4, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:

> In fact, 1984 was 10 years before the World Wide Web (commonly called
> the internet) was born. It was the year Ronald Reagan was re-elected as
> president; the telephone monopoly Bell System was officially dismantled
> and AT&T launched; and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, was
> born.

In that era, many tech press magazines had articles on the supposed upcoming collision between giants AT&T and IBM as each got into the other's business lines. But, as it turned out, both AT&T and IBM shrunk from their giant size, and didn't do well going outside their core businesses.

The predictions for the post-AT&T-Divestiture world were totally off. Back then, they were still worried that AT&T was still too strong and big, yet it ended up being bought out by a baby Bell. And they thought the baby Bells were too weak, yet they have thrived. I don't think back then they anticipated the huge growth in wireless phones and functions, and digital data delivery.

For wireless, I think they only expected people to use them as mobile phones--certainly lots more of them--but still restricted to automobile use. Remember, the original cell phones were still large units, and were installed in automobiles, replacing the old mobile phone system. Handsets that were truly affordable and portable would come later, as well as non-voice uses..
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265467 is a reply to message #265454] Thu, 28 August 2014 10:24 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Shmuel (Seymour J.) M is currently offline  Shmuel (Seymour J.) M
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In <m3wq9srbs9.fsf@garlic.com>, on 08/28/2014
at 09:20 AM, Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> said:

> No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was
> Like In 1984

When was the ARPAnet-MILNET split?

> http://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-what-tech-was-like-in -1984-2014-8

> In fact, 1984 was 10 years before the World Wide Web (commonly
> called the internet)

The web is not and never was the Internet.

> and AT&T launched

AT&T existed long before divestiture.

--
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Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
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Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265468 is a reply to message #265454] Thu, 28 August 2014 10:36 Go to previous messageGo to next message
wfw is currently offline  wfw
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On 8/28/2014 8:20 AM, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
> No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like
> In 1984
> http://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-what-tech-was-like-in -1984-2014-8
> In fact, 1984 was 10 years before the World Wide Web (commonly called
> the internet) was born. It was the year Ronald Reagan was re-elected as
> president; the telephone monopoly Bell System was officially dismantled
> and AT&T launched; and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, was
> born.
>

It bothers me when something like that implies the World Wide Web and the Internet
are the same thing.

http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/Web_vs_Internet .asp
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265469 is a reply to message #265455] Thu, 28 August 2014 10:38 Go to previous messageGo to next message
hancock4 is currently offline  hancock4
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On Thursday, August 28, 2014 9:40:53 AM UTC-4, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:

> random email from 1984 to somebody at mit .... it answers question how
> ibm san jose research datacenter was charging users

In the mainframe world, users were slowly migrating from batch to on-line for business applications. Each new generation of mainframe had more bang-for-buck, allowing enough horsepower* to support more on-line terminals. More end-users could look up information instantly on a terminal instead of referring to batch generated printouts and fiche or manual records. Also, existing on-line applications were upgraded from maintaining limited information to sophisticated systems. (At that time, my employer upgraded an application that used 12x40 terminals to 24x80).


In the later 1970s, programmers were transitioning from punched card submissions to terminals, where they could submit their compiles and tests on-line, and review the results on-line instead of waiting for printout. Originally, companies had "terminal alley" where programmers shared a few terminals, but costs went down to allow hardware to support a terminal for every programmer.

Many folks got PCs on their desks which included a terminal emulation card. (I think I had a Zenith).


* CPU, (core) memory, disk space, communication lines, and communication controllers. All that stuff wasn't cheap, but the price was declining. If memory serves, I think in 1984 a real IBM 3270 terminal cost about $1,000, but then competing terminals were much cheaper.
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265470 is a reply to message #265454] Thu, 28 August 2014 10:49 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Morten Reistad is currently offline  Morten Reistad
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In article <m3wq9srbs9.fsf@garlic.com>,
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> wrote:
>
> No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like
> In 1984
> http://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-what-tech-was-like-in -1984-2014-8
>
> In fact, 1984 was 10 years before the World Wide Web (commonly called
> the internet) was born. It was the year Ronald Reagan was re-elected as
> president; the telephone monopoly Bell System was officially dismantled
> and AT&T launched; and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, was
> born.

It was the year I got my first usenet access via telecom lines (dialup
to a bbs, and x.25 from there to international destinations for the
compressed feeds).

EUnet was two years old at the time, founded around easter of 1982, as
the first commercial ISP outside the US. It was number 4 in total, after
the commercial arm of NSFnet, uunet and one other I cannot remember
right now.

tcp/ip was a year old in 1984, and was slowly making inroads into
local networks.

So, there WAS internet in 1984, just very embryonic. I was logged
in to some nodes in the US two times that year, just as a guest to
see what it was like, via satellite.

-- mrr
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265472 is a reply to message #265467] Thu, 28 August 2014 10:58 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Morten Reistad is currently offline  Morten Reistad
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In article <53ff3bb9$9$fuzhry+tra$mr2ice@news.patriot.net>,
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spamtrap@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:
> In <m3wq9srbs9.fsf@garlic.com>, on 08/28/2014
> at 09:20 AM, Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> said:
>
>> No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was
>> Like In 1984
>
> When was the ARPAnet-MILNET split?

Initially jan 1st 1983, extended to march 1st for some laggard
installations.

>> http://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-what-tech-was-like-in -1984-2014-8
>
>> In fact, 1984 was 10 years before the World Wide Web (commonly
>> called the internet)
>
> The web is not and never was the Internet.
>
>> and AT&T launched
>
> AT&T existed long before divestiture.
.
Due to the foresight of Pal Spilling in the research arm of Telenor
Norway was connected to the Arpanet in september 1972, a week after
the UK, and almost a full year ahead of Canada.

It was a 9600 bps satellite connection to Kjeller research facility
outside Oslo, but still.

That is 12 years ahead of 1984.

I got to test the followon to that connection in 1984, just before it
was dismantled and replaced by "real" telecom lines, and after the
milnet split. (It was to be part of the milnet part, but the
connections were all civilian).

This was telnet sessions between dec20s. On the Internet.

So, some of us were on the 'net (it wasn't called the Internet
before later).

Those who complained that we could spend a full hour connected
in 1995 should have a mirror shown to themselves today.

-- mrr
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265475 is a reply to message #265469] Thu, 28 August 2014 11:19 Go to previous messageGo to next message
timcaffrey is currently offline  timcaffrey
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On Thursday, August 28, 2014 10:38:14 AM UTC-4, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> On Thursday, August 28, 2014 9:40:53 AM UTC-4, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
>
>

>
> * CPU, (core) memory, disk space, communication lines, and communication
controllers. All that stuff wasn't cheap, but the price was declining.
If memory serves, I think in 1984 a real IBM 3270 terminal cost about $1,000,
but then competing terminals were much cheaper.

In 1984 the place I worked at sold terminals for Burroughs systems considerably
below what Burroughs charged for their terminals. I believe the price was
something like $1700, and they were sold with very little profit (if any).

It seems unlikely that IBM would charge as little as $1000 for a 3270.

Also in 1984 I bought my first micro. A Zenith Z-100. 8088, 192K of memory,
10Meg hard disk, color monitor: $4500 with the educational discount.
It was a very good price for that system for several years (even
when compared against IBM-PC & clones). (Yeah, I still have it, it has
had a few upgrades since then :) ).

- Tim
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265476 is a reply to message #265475] Thu, 28 August 2014 11:36 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Dan Espen is currently offline  Dan Espen
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timcaffrey@aol.com writes:

> On Thursday, August 28, 2014 10:38:14 AM UTC-4, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>> On Thursday, August 28, 2014 9:40:53 AM UTC-4, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
>>
>>
>
>>
>> * CPU, (core) memory, disk space, communication lines, and communication
> controllers. All that stuff wasn't cheap, but the price was declining.
> If memory serves, I think in 1984 a real IBM 3270 terminal cost about $1,000,
> but then competing terminals were much cheaper.
>
> In 1984 the place I worked at sold terminals for Burroughs systems considerably
> below what Burroughs charged for their terminals. I believe the price was
> something like $1700, and they were sold with very little profit (if any).
>
> It seems unlikely that IBM would charge as little as $1000 for a 3270.

I never bought one, but I heard 3K somewhere.

--
Dan Espen
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265477 is a reply to message #265454] Thu, 28 August 2014 11:57 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Quadibloc is currently offline  Quadibloc
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On Thursday, August 28, 2014 7:20:22 AM UTC-6, Anne & Lynn Wheeler quoted, in part:

> In fact, 1984 was 10 years before the World Wide Web (commonly called
> the internet) was born.

And that parenthetical comment is a technical gaffe. Yes, 1984 is before the
World Wide Web existed. But the Internet did exist in 1984. Or did it?

In 1982, according to Wikipedia, TCP/IP became the standard protocol of ARPANET.

In 1981, there were 550 UUCP hosts, so USEnet was very much alive.

But it wasn't until 1989, five years after 1984, that any of the unwashed
masses could connect to the Internet - when the very first dial-up ISP opened
for business. So in 1984, the Internet existed, but it was just for a few
fortunate people in academia.

John Savard
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265479 is a reply to message #265467] Thu, 28 August 2014 11:56 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
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On Thu, 28 Aug 2014 10:24:57 -0400
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spamtrap@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:

> The web is not and never was the Internet.

Indeed not, however to most people the internet is that which is
expolred using the internet explorer- ie. the web. They are not aware that
the internet was around long before the web (as such things go) and that at
one time the web was thought of as that corner of the internet where
commercialism is not frowned upon heavily.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays
C:>WIN | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see
You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265481 is a reply to message #265454] Thu, 28 August 2014 12:03 Go to previous messageGo to next message
wfw is currently offline  wfw
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On 8/28/2014 8:20 AM, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
> No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like
> In 1984
> http://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-what-tech-was-like-in -1984-2014-8
> In fact, 1984 was 10 years before the World Wide Web (commonly called
> the internet) was born. It was the year Ronald Reagan was re-elected as
> president; the telephone monopoly Bell System was officially dismantled
> and AT&T launched; and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, was
> born.
>
> ... snip ...
>
> 30yrs ago
>

What I noticed at first when I had regular access to the Internet was the expanded
"world view" that I acquired. I started paying attention to time-zones across the
planet and started to collaborate with programmers who I imagined I'd probably never
actually meet.

Before then I used resources like Compuserve and Fidonet, but never felt the
international nature of the experience like I did when I started relying on the Internet.
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265482 is a reply to message #265467] Thu, 28 August 2014 12:25 Go to previous messageGo to next message
hancock4 is currently offline  hancock4
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On Thursday, August 28, 2014 10:24:57 AM UTC-4, Seymour J. Shmuel Metz wrote:

>> In fact, 1984 was 10 years before the World Wide Web (commonly
>> called the internet)

> The web is not and never was the Internet.

True. But I think in the minds of the vast majority of today's users, the web is the Internet; indeed, the terms are used interchangeably.

Overall, I don't think the article was that good; like its error about AT&T. AT&T didn't "launch" anything in 1984.
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265483 is a reply to message #265477] Thu, 28 August 2014 12:28 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Stephen Wolstenholme is currently offline  Stephen Wolstenholme
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On Thu, 28 Aug 2014 08:57:12 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
<jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:

> On Thursday, August 28, 2014 7:20:22 AM UTC-6, Anne & Lynn Wheeler quoted, in part:
>
>> In fact, 1984 was 10 years before the World Wide Web (commonly called
>> the internet) was born.
>
> And that parenthetical comment is a technical gaffe. Yes, 1984 is before the
> World Wide Web existed. But the Internet did exist in 1984. Or did it?
>
> In 1982, according to Wikipedia, TCP/IP became the standard protocol of ARPANET.
>

Don't remind me. It brings back nightmares trying to get existing
messaging systems to use it.

> In 1981, there were 550 UUCP hosts, so USEnet was very much alive.
>

That's where we should have stopped!

Steve

--
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Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265484 is a reply to message #265479] Thu, 28 August 2014 12:29 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Stan Barr is currently offline  Stan Barr
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On Thu, 28 Aug 2014 16:56:58 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot
<steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Aug 2014 10:24:57 -0400
> Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spamtrap@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:
>
>> The web is not and never was the Internet.
>
> Indeed not, however to most people the internet is that which is
> expolred using the internet explorer- ie. the web. They are not aware that
> the internet was around long before the web (as such things go) and that at
> one time the web was thought of as that corner of the internet where
> commercialism is not frowned upon heavily.
>

Quite. I keep an old Mac SE from 1988 in the den here with a dial-up
modem and a dial-up internet account just to show visitors what the
internet was like before Tim Berners-Lee changed the game :-)

On this pre-WWW theme, earlier on I was looking through the usenet
archive from 1981 (using gopher!) - very interesting...

(The 1981 archive was originally on 144 9-track tapes and took almost
2 weeks to copy off)

--
Stan Barr plan.b@bluesomatic.org
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265485 is a reply to message #265475] Thu, 28 August 2014 12:34 Go to previous messageGo to next message
hancock4 is currently offline  hancock4
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On Thursday, August 28, 2014 11:19:07 AM UTC-4, timca...@aol.com wrote:
> In 1984 the place I worked at sold terminals for Burroughs systems considerably
> below what Burroughs charged for their terminals. I believe the price was
> something like $1700, and they were sold with very little profit (if any).
> It seems unlikely that IBM would charge as little as $1000 for a 3270.

I am going solely by memory, but in 1984 we were installing a new mainframe system and acquiring terminals. I do remember the $1,000 price because it represented a cutoff, and the competition (Telex) was noticeably cheaper.



> Also in 1984 I bought my first micro. A Zenith Z-100. 8088, 192K of memory,
> 10Meg hard disk, color monitor: $4500 with the educational discount.
> It was a very good price for that system for several years (even
> when compared against IBM-PC & clones). (Yeah, I still have it, it has
> had a few upgrades since then :) ).

$4k for something like that seems expensive. I remember, at that time, a colleague buying an "full" IBM XT, with hard drive, 640k, etc., and I recall she paid $3,000 for it. (I thought that price was obscene for the capability offered).

I bought an 286 clone a few years later, paying $2,000 for it. Everyone told me I should've bought a 386 which were just coming out, but the 286 was plenty for my needs for years. I replaced that with an HP Pentium.
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265492 is a reply to message #265477] Thu, 28 August 2014 12:41 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Michael Black is currently offline  Michael Black
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On Thu, 28 Aug 2014, Quadibloc wrote:

> On Thursday, August 28, 2014 7:20:22 AM UTC-6, Anne & Lynn Wheeler quoted, in part:
>
>> In fact, 1984 was 10 years before the World Wide Web (commonly called
>> the internet) was born.
>
> And that parenthetical comment is a technical gaffe. Yes, 1984 is before the
> World Wide Web existed. But the Internet did exist in 1984. Or did it?
>
> In 1982, according to Wikipedia, TCP/IP became the standard protocol of ARPANET.
>
> In 1981, there were 550 UUCP hosts, so USEnet was very much alive.
>
> But it wasn't until 1989, five years after 1984, that any of the unwashed
> masses could connect to the Internet - when the very first dial-up ISP opened
> for business. So in 1984, the Internet existed, but it was just for a few
> fortunate people in academia.
>
And that's really where the comment comes from, common access and the
popularity of the internet came with the Web. Since both happened at
about the same time, it's hard to tell if the web caused the access (ie
suddenly something worth it for everyman), or access meant the web took
off really fast, as online population took off.

It is an error, but for most people, they had no idea there was something
out there until the Web was in place.

Michael
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265494 is a reply to message #265468] Thu, 28 August 2014 13:09 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel is currently offline  Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel
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Texas <a@b.com> writes:
> It bothers me when something like that implies the World Wide Web and the Internet
> are the same thing.
> http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/Web_vs_Internet .asp

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#59 No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#60 No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984

the big change over in technology was the 1jan1983 change-over to
tcp/ip. before that things were relatively tightly controlled with
availability of IMPs and administrative processes. some collected
old posts on the subject
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm

as i've mentioned before, we had been working with NSF & some of the NSF
supercomputer centers about interconnecting them ... some old email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

we were suppose to get $20M for the implementation ... but then congress
cut the budget, some other things happened, and finally NSF releases an
RFP. Internal politics prevent us from bidding and the director of NSF
(with support from other agencies) writes the company a letter (copying
the CEO) ... but that just makes the internal politics worse. some past
posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

Regional networks connect to the NSF supercomputer nodes and the
supercomputer network morphs into the NSFNET backbone ... precursor to
the modern internet. some discussion in this article
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/401444/grid-co mputing/

as i've mentioned before the internal network was larger than the
arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime late '85
or early '86 ... some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

and the same technology was used in the corporate sponsored university
BITNET (EARN in europe) ... some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

old 1984 email from person in paris responsible for getting EARN going
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#email840320
in this post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#65 UUCP email

co-worker at the science center responsible for internal network
technology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edson_Hendricks

posts mentioning science center
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

old post that includes list of world-wide internal corporate locations
that had one or more nodes added in 1983
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#8

reference to first webserver in US (1991 on slac's vm370 system)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265495 is a reply to message #265477] Thu, 28 August 2014 14:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
osmium is currently offline  osmium
Messages: 749
Registered: April 2013
Karma: 0
Senior Member
"Quadibloc" <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:

> On Thursday, August 28, 2014 7:20:22 AM UTC-6, Anne & Lynn Wheeler quoted,
> in part:
>
>> In fact, 1984 was 10 years before the World Wide Web (commonly called
>> the internet) was born.
>
> And that parenthetical comment is a technical gaffe. Yes, 1984 is before
> the
> World Wide Web existed. But the Internet did exist in 1984. Or did it?
>
> In 1982, according to Wikipedia, TCP/IP became the standard protocol of
> ARPANET.
>
> In 1981, there were 550 UUCP hosts, so USEnet was very much alive.
>
> But it wasn't until 1989, five years after 1984, that any of the unwashed
> masses could connect to the Internet - when the very first dial-up ISP
> opened
> for business. So in 1984, the Internet existed, but it was just for a few
> fortunate people in academia.

The first exposure to internet for the unwashed that I saw was a product
called, as I recall, "Internet in a Bag". Perhaps it was Brown Bag. I am
quite sure I saw this no later than 1986.

I find zilch useful on google, someone seems to have revived the phrase with
a new meaning/association and that dominates the hits

I became aware of ARPANET and IMPs (at work) in the 1982 time frame and
bought some BB&N stock as a result - I could see a future for this stuff.
No, I did not make a killing.
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265496 is a reply to message #265485] Thu, 28 August 2014 14:25 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel is currently offline  Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel
Messages: 3156
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes:
> $4k for something like that seems expensive. I remember, at that
> time, a colleague buying an "full" IBM XT, with hard drive, 640k,
> etc., and I recall she paid $3,000 for it. (I thought that price was
> obscene for the capability offered).
>
> I bought an 286 clone a few years later, paying $2,000 for it.
> Everyone told me I should've bought a 386 which were just coming out,
> but the 286 was plenty for my needs for years. I replaced that with
> an HP Pentium.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#59 No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#60 No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#61 No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984

the fareast was building up huge clone 286 inventory for the xmas season
when the 386sx (16bit bus) came out and totally decimated the 286 market
and then there were huge 286 fire sales. I was tracking quantity one
prices in sunday SJMN and posting them internally ... which showed a
enormous difference from projections in the boca/ps2 business plans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80386#The_80386SX_variant

I vaguely remember getting one of the kids a 386sx clone fall88 for
something like $1800 ... but as can be seen the prices over the next
couple years were dropping fast.

some past posts with sunday SJMN prices
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#79 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#80 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#1 The BASIC Variations
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#44 Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#60 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#10 Happy DEC-10 Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#26 upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire"

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265499 is a reply to message #265495] Thu, 28 August 2014 14:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
wfw is currently offline  wfw
Messages: 125
Registered: March 2005
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 8/28/2014 1:13 PM, Osmium wrote:
> The first exposure to internet for the unwashed that I saw was a product
> called, as I recall, "Internet in a Bag". Perhaps it was Brown Bag. I am
> quite sure I saw this no later than 1986.
>
> I find zilch useful on google, someone seems to have revived the phrase with
> a new meaning/association and that dominates the hits
>

"Internet in a Box" ?

https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2067/2044696427_060bc3b65a_z.j pg?zz=1
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265500 is a reply to message #265496] Thu, 28 August 2014 14:43 Go to previous messageGo to next message
hancock4 is currently offline  hancock4
Messages: 6746
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Thursday, August 28, 2014 2:25:01 PM UTC-4, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:

> the fareast was building up huge clone 286 inventory for the xmas season
> when the 386sx (16bit bus) came out and totally decimated the 286 market
> and then there were huge 286 fire sales. I was tracking quantity one
> prices in sunday SJMN and posting them internally ... which showed a
> enormous difference from projections in the boca/ps2 business plans

When I bought my 286, the 386's were selling for about $200 more. I didn't see any advantage for what I wanted, so I saw no point to spend another $200 when I was already spending $2k, which was a lot of money. But, as mentioned, everyone I knew said I should get the 386 "for future use". As it turned out, I had no need for it.

The PC did not come with a modem, and I believe a 2400 internal was $60.

Indeed, the applications I ran were generally designed for an 8088, so they ran quite nicely on a 286.

I purchased a QuickBasic 4.5 compiler, and that ran very well, as it the executables I produced.

I think the $2k total included a dot matrix printer, which I really liked, but sadly no longer works.

I believe the machine came with DOS 3.3. When DOS 5.0 came out, everyone ran out and got a copy, including me. But I discovered 5.0 didn't have anything that would improve what I did, except a new EDIT and QBASIC. So, I just added those only two programs (they worked in tandem) and continued with DOS 3.3.

As mentioned, QBASIC no longer runs on modern machines, a lack of backward compatibility I think stinks. (Would anyone know if a compiled executable generated by Visual Basic vers 4 would run on a modern machine? I own that compiler.)
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265508 is a reply to message #265499] Thu, 28 August 2014 15:25 Go to previous messageGo to next message
osmium is currently offline  osmium
Messages: 749
Registered: April 2013
Karma: 0
Senior Member
"Texas" <a@b.com> wrote in message
news:_MGdnXJDaNvr62LOnZ2dnUVZ_jSdnZ2d@posted.internetamerica...
> On 8/28/2014 1:13 PM, Osmium wrote:
>> The first exposure to internet for the unwashed that I saw was a product
>> called, as I recall, "Internet in a Bag". Perhaps it was Brown Bag. I
>> am
>> quite sure I saw this no later than 1986.
>>
>> I find zilch useful on google, someone seems to have revived the phrase
>> with
>> a new meaning/association and that dominates the hits
>>
>
> "Internet in a Box" ?
>
> https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2067/2044696427_060bc3b65a_z.j pg?zz=1

That must be it. Jeez, according to Wiki I was way off and this came out in
1994. I thought the store I had in mind had already been replaced by a
guitar store ( a BIG guitar store) by 1994.

Wiki says the guy got $100e6 in cash and stock for his company. If $1e6 was
in cash I think he done good.
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265512 is a reply to message #265485] Thu, 28 August 2014 16:06 Go to previous messageGo to next message
timcaffrey is currently offline  timcaffrey
Messages: 32
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Member
On Thursday, August 28, 2014 12:34:14 PM UTC-4, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> On Thursday, August 28, 2014 11:19:07 AM UTC-4, timca...@aol.com wrote:
>
>> Also in 1984 I bought my first micro. A Zenith Z-100. 8088, 192K of memory,
>> 10Meg hard disk, color monitor: $4500 with the educational discount.
>> It was a very good price for that system for several years (even
>> when compared against IBM-PC & clones). (Yeah, I still have it, it has
>> had a few upgrades since then :) ).
>
>
>
> $4k for something like that seems expensive. I remember, at that time, a colleague buying an "full" IBM XT, with hard drive, 640k, etc., and I recall she paid $3,000 for it. (I thought that price was obscene for the capability offered).
>

I found this site (grains of salt and all that):
http://oldcomputers.net/ibm5150.html

"1983: March - IBM announces the IBM PC XT, with a 10 MB hard drive, 128KB RAM and a 360KB floppy drive. It costs US$5000."

I remember my color monitor was $300 or $400 all by itself. (Made a pretty good TV in later years).

- Tim
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265513 is a reply to message #265477] Thu, 28 August 2014 14:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Morten Reistad is currently offline  Morten Reistad
Messages: 2108
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
In article <410b94a0-ac23-44d8-b00d-b0991c87b1e6@googlegroups.com>,
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> On Thursday, August 28, 2014 7:20:22 AM UTC-6, Anne & Lynn Wheeler quoted, in part:
>
>> In fact, 1984 was 10 years before the World Wide Web (commonly called
>> the internet) was born.
>
> And that parenthetical comment is a technical gaffe. Yes, 1984 is before the
> World Wide Web existed. But the Internet did exist in 1984. Or did it?
>
> In 1982, according to Wikipedia, TCP/IP became the standard protocol of ARPANET.
>
> In 1981, there were 550 UUCP hosts, so USEnet was very much alive.
>
> But it wasn't until 1989, five years after 1984, that any of the unwashed
> masses could connect to the Internet - when the very first dial-up ISP opened
> for business. So in 1984, the Internet existed, but it was just for a few
> fortunate people in academia.

It was heavily balkanised, even for academia. But dialup access was
first set up by uunet in late 1981. Only experimental ip connectivity
to about 200 hosts out of around 1000, but still.

It was the CIX wars, about getting the internet de-balkanised, that took
place from January 1989 till January 1990, when the commercial vendors set
up the CIX; the Commercial Internet Exchange. It was heavily opposed by
TPTB, but won such a resounding victory that it was defacto the core
of the Internet until other exchanges with more scalable technology
took over later in the 1990s.

usenet and email usually routed through gateways until they had
to close them for spam ca 1992.

-- mrr
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265514 is a reply to message #265512] Thu, 28 August 2014 16:21 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Michael Black is currently offline  Michael Black
Messages: 2799
Registered: February 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Thu, 28 Aug 2014, timcaffrey@aol.com wrote:

> On Thursday, August 28, 2014 12:34:14 PM UTC-4, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>> On Thursday, August 28, 2014 11:19:07 AM UTC-4, timca...@aol.com wrote:
>>
>>> Also in 1984 I bought my first micro. A Zenith Z-100. 8088, 192K of memory,
>>> 10Meg hard disk, color monitor: $4500 with the educational discount.
>>> It was a very good price for that system for several years (even
>>> when compared against IBM-PC & clones). (Yeah, I still have it, it has
>>> had a few upgrades since then :) ).
>>
>>
>>
>> $4k for something like that seems expensive. I remember, at that time,
>> a colleague buying an "full" IBM XT, with hard drive, 640k, etc., and I
>> recall she paid $3,000 for it. (I thought that price was obscene for
>> the capability offered).
>>
>
> I found this site (grains of salt and all that):
> http://oldcomputers.net/ibm5150.html
>
> "1983: March - IBM announces the IBM PC XT, with a 10 MB hard drive, 128KB RAM and a 360KB floppy drive. It costs US$5000."
>
> I remember my color monitor was $300 or $400 all by itself. (Made a pretty good TV in later years).
>
People forget, those computers were so much more affordable than
minicomputers, yet they were still pretty expensive.

I remember in the late seventies, I'd have loved to get an Apple II, but
it was too expensive. Even when a local mall had some promotion where the
stores would put a few items on sale, and keep dropping the price each day
until it was sold, the great discount for the last day was too much for
me. That's assuming nobody bought it before it reached the lowest price.

The earlier home computers were probably as expensive, but the cost was
hidden, since you didn't generally buy up front, you'd buy this and then
later add more memory or whatever. I ended up with an OSI SUperboard II in
the fall of 1981, in effect a "poor man's Apple II" since it did the same
basics and had the 6502, but it wasn't really a comparison.

ONe way we saved money was to not get a floppy drive, which of course
wans't an option in the first couple of years anyway. I didn't get a
floppy drive until July of 1984, thirty years ago, I paid five hundred
dollars Canadian for the controller, and the single floppy drive in an
enclosure with a power supply.

That's one good thing about the masses, they helped drive down costs. I
paid $80 for my first 3.5" floppy drive in 1989, I think it was a return.
But then later, those were down to about $20. Ram is endlessly cheaper
now, and you get a whole lot more of it for the lower price. Same with
hard drives, if I couldn't find used, I could still find a hard drive
today that was cheaper and way larger than my first 80meg hard drive in
late 1993.

I haven't bought a new desktop computer since 1989, it became easy to find
on the used market computers that were way good enough after that. Part
of me is tempted to buy something new, and I balk at the price, when I
could get so much more and still pay less than that Color Computer with
floppy drive in the summer of 1984. And I bought that back then because I
could do it in pieces, and I couldn't afford an Apple II or an IBM.

Michael
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265516 is a reply to message #265514] Thu, 28 August 2014 16:33 Go to previous messageGo to next message
timcaffrey is currently offline  timcaffrey
Messages: 32
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Member
On Thursday, August 28, 2014 4:21:38 PM UTC-4, Michael Black wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Aug 2014, timcaffrey@aol.com wrote:
>
>
> That's one good thing about the masses, they helped drive down costs. I
> paid $80 for my first 3.5" floppy drive in 1989, I think it was a return.
> But then later, those were down to about $20. Ram is endlessly cheaper
> now, and you get a whole lot more of it for the lower price. Same with
> hard drives, if I couldn't find used, I could still find a hard drive
> today that was cheaper and way larger than my first 80meg hard drive in
> late 1993.
>
Fun chart for the day:

http://www.jcmit.com/mem2014.htm

- Tim
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265526 is a reply to message #265495] Thu, 28 August 2014 17:10 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel is currently offline  Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel
Messages: 3156
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
"Osmium" <r124c4u102@comcast.net> writes:
> The first exposure to internet for the unwashed that I saw was a product
> called, as I recall, "Internet in a Bag". Perhaps it was Brown Bag. I am
> quite sure I saw this no later than 1986.
>
> I find zilch useful on google, someone seems to have revived the phrase with
> a new meaning/association and that dominates the hits
>
> I became aware of ARPANET and IMPs (at work) in the 1982 time frame and
> bought some BB&N stock as a result - I could see a future for this stuff.
> No, I did not make a killing.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#59 No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#60 No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#61 No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#62 No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984

ucb bsd people tell of having meetings with darpa ... where ucb was
supposed to do unix clone ... but *NOT* to do tcp/ip networking, that
was supposed to be done by BBN ... UCB just "Yes: them to death" to
darpa and kept on with tcp/ip implementation. recent reference
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#13 The SDS 92, its place in history?

by late 80s, tcp/ip was rapidly becoming commoditized infrastructure
with lowest price being the dominating factor ... this recently came up
in the discussion of network systems that had high-end enterprise
interconnect that quickly moved into the tcp/ip market ... but lost out
to the lowest priced vendors.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014g.html#75 non-IBM: SONY new tape storage - 185 Terabytes on a tape
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#36 curly brace languages source code style quides
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#39 curly brace languages source code style quides

the internet (& web) also started to obsolete the VAN (value-added
network) vendors ... and other online offerings ... i've mentioned this
before in the move from the proprietary online banking operations moving
to the internet in the mid-90s ... some past posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#dialup-banking

random trivia, in early 70s, my wife had interviewed with BBN in
Rosslyn ... but they wanted her to move to Massachusetts for the
networking group ... she joined ibm in gburg instead.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What TechWas Like In 1984 [message #265527 is a reply to message #265514] Thu, 28 August 2014 17:14 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Walter Banks is currently offline  Walter Banks
Messages: 1000
Registered: July 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Michael Black wrote:

> On Thu, 28 Aug 2014, timcaffrey@aol.com wrote:
>
>> On Thursday, August 28, 2014 12:34:14 PM UTC-4, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>> On Thursday, August 28, 2014 11:19:07 AM UTC-4, timca...@aol.com wrote:
>>>
>>>> Also in 1984 I bought my first micro. A Zenith Z-100. 8088, 192K of memory,
>>>> 10Meg hard disk, color monitor: $4500 with the educational discount.
>>>> It was a very good price for that system for several years (even
>>>> when compared against IBM-PC & clones). (Yeah, I still have it, it has
>>>> had a few upgrades since then :) ).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> $4k for something like that seems expensive. I remember, at that time,
>>> a colleague buying an "full" IBM XT, with hard drive, 640k, etc., and I
>>> recall she paid $3,000 for it. (I thought that price was obscene for
>>> the capability offered).
>>>
>>
>> I found this site (grains of salt and all that):
>> http://oldcomputers.net/ibm5150.html
>>
>> "1983: March - IBM announces the IBM PC XT, with a 10 MB hard drive, 128KB RAM and a 360KB floppy drive. It costs US$5000."
>>
>> I remember my color monitor was $300 or $400 all by itself. (Made a pretty good TV in later years).
>>
> People forget, those computers were so much more affordable than
> minicomputers, yet they were still pretty expensive.
>
> I remember in the late seventies, I'd have loved to get an Apple II, but
> it was too expensive. Even when a local mall had some promotion where the
> stores would put a few items on sale, and keep dropping the price each day
> until it was sold, the great discount for the last day was too much for
> me. That's assuming nobody bought it before it reached the lowest price.
>
> The earlier home computers were probably as expensive, but the cost was
> hidden, since you didn't generally buy up front, you'd buy this and then
> later add more memory or whatever. I ended up with an OSI SUperboard II in
> the fall of 1981, in effect a "poor man's Apple II" since it did the same
> basics and had the 6502, but it wasn't really a comparison.
>
> ONe way we saved money was to not get a floppy drive, which of course
> wans't an option in the first couple of years anyway. I didn't get a
> floppy drive until July of 1984, thirty years ago, I paid five hundred
> dollars Canadian for the controller, and the single floppy drive in an
> enclosure with a power supply.
>
> That's one good thing about the masses, they helped drive down costs. I
> paid $80 for my first 3.5" floppy drive in 1989, I think it was a return.
> But then later, those were down to about $20. Ram is endlessly cheaper
> now, and you get a whole lot more of it for the lower price. Same with
> hard drives, if I couldn't find used, I could still find a hard drive
> today that was cheaper and way larger than my first 80meg hard drive in
> late 1993.
>
> I haven't bought a new desktop computer since 1989, it became easy to find
> on the used market computers that were way good enough after that. Part
> of me is tempted to buy something new, and I balk at the price, when I
> could get so much more and still pay less than that Color Computer with
> floppy drive in the summer of 1984. And I bought that back then because I
> could do it in pieces, and I couldn't afford an Apple II or an IBM.
>
> Michael

The world has really changed. There are some bargains now. The first apple ][
with two floppies and a monitor I paid about $5000 (Canadian) I ran UCSD pascal
on it.

In 1979 I bought a PDP-11 from a receiver for a bankruptcy, I paid $1400 for it.
Add a terminal and printer and I had quite a bit of personal computing power
for the time.

Now computing is comparatively free. I just bought a smart camera that is wifi
enabled, with a hdmi screen on the back is (1920*1080) it also has a micro
hdmi jack to attach to a monitor. It knows about blue tooth keyboards.
Travel computer and camera. I paid less than a bare bones 5 1/4 floppy drive
in years past.I can actually do development work on it camera.
32 or 64G micro SD cards can hold a lot of data.

w..

w..
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265533 is a reply to message #265508] Thu, 28 August 2014 19:07 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Michael Black is currently offline  Michael Black
Messages: 2799
Registered: February 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Thu, 28 Aug 2014, Osmium wrote:

>
> "Texas" <a@b.com> wrote in message
> news:_MGdnXJDaNvr62LOnZ2dnUVZ_jSdnZ2d@posted.internetamerica...
>> On 8/28/2014 1:13 PM, Osmium wrote:
>>> The first exposure to internet for the unwashed that I saw was a product
>>> called, as I recall, "Internet in a Bag". Perhaps it was Brown Bag. I
>>> am
>>> quite sure I saw this no later than 1986.
>>>
>>> I find zilch useful on google, someone seems to have revived the phrase
>>> with
>>> a new meaning/association and that dominates the hits
>>>
>>
>> "Internet in a Box" ?
>>
>> https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2067/2044696427_060bc3b65a_z.j pg?zz=1
>
> That must be it. Jeez, according to Wiki I was way off and this came out in
> 1994. I thought the store I had in mind had already been replaced by a
> guitar store ( a BIG guitar store) by 1994.
>
> Wiki says the guy got $100e6 in cash and stock for his company. If $1e6 was
> in cash I think he done good.
>
Wasn't there later (but not by much), something like "Internet in a Book"?
A mostly yellow cover, it was thick (as books tended to be at that point),
but the key thing was the floppy disk (I don't think it was a CDROM) that
would get you online, if you had an ISP. There was a WIndows and a Mac
version, I know I got the Mac version at a book clearance, but I cant'
remember the proper name.

Michael
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265554 is a reply to message #265492] Fri, 29 August 2014 03:28 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Jack Myers

Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Aug 2014, Quadibloc wrote:

>> On Thursday, August 28, 2014 7:20:22 AM UTC-6, Anne & Lynn Wheeler quoted, in part:
>>
>>> In fact, 1984 was 10 years before the World Wide Web (commonly called
>>> the internet) was born.
>>
>> But it wasn't until 1989, five years after 1984, that any of the unwashed
>> masses could connect to the Internet - when the very first dial-up ISP opened
>> for business. So in 1984, the Internet existed, but it was just for a few
>> fortunate people in academia.
>>
> And that's really where the comment comes from, common access and the
> popularity of the internet came with the Web. Since both happened at
> about the same time, it's hard to tell if the web caused the access (ie
> suddenly something worth it for everyman), or access meant the web took
> off really fast, as online population took off.

Don't forget that long-haul telecommunications prices dropped
significantly during that period. Also, statistical multiplexing evolved
to accomodate bursty traffic. The wideband long-haul leased lines
were no longer subdivided into sub-channels, instead the full bandwidth
might be assigned briefly to a single web page. That web page might draw
information from geographically diverse servers, something that
telephone engineers had not anticipated.

> It is an error, but for most people, they had no idea there was something
> out there until the Web was in place.

Yes, and it took years for the web to move from the research labs to
businesses and then to homes.

--
I joked long ago that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the
headlines would read 'Views Differ on Shape of Planet.' --Paul Krugman
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265560 is a reply to message #265554] Fri, 29 August 2014 07:51 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Morten Reistad is currently offline  Morten Reistad
Messages: 2108
Registered: December 2011
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Senior Member
In article <3mm5db-6sf.ln1@n6wuz.net>, Jack Myers <jmyers@n6wuz.net> wrote:
> Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> wrote:
>> On Thu, 28 Aug 2014, Quadibloc wrote:
>
>>> On Thursday, August 28, 2014 7:20:22 AM UTC-6, Anne & Lynn Wheeler quoted, in part:
>>>
>>>> In fact, 1984 was 10 years before the World Wide Web (commonly called
>>>> the internet) was born.
>>>
>>> But it wasn't until 1989, five years after 1984, that any of the unwashed
>>> masses could connect to the Internet - when the very first dial-up ISP opened
>>> for business. So in 1984, the Internet existed, but it was just for a few
>>> fortunate people in academia.
>>>
>> And that's really where the comment comes from, common access and the
>> popularity of the internet came with the Web. Since both happened at
>> about the same time, it's hard to tell if the web caused the access (ie
>> suddenly something worth it for everyman), or access meant the web took
>> off really fast, as online population took off.
>
> Don't forget that long-haul telecommunications prices dropped
> significantly during that period. Also, statistical multiplexing evolved
> to accomodate bursty traffic. The wideband long-haul leased lines
> were no longer subdivided into sub-channels, instead the full bandwidth
> might be assigned briefly to a single web page. That web page might draw
> information from geographically diverse servers, something that
> telephone engineers had not anticipated.

Also, DWDM was invented and deployed; giving a 100-fold increase in
capacity on fiber lines for about a doubling of the cost.

>> It is an error, but for most people, they had no idea there was something
>> out there until the Web was in place.
>
> Yes, and it took years for the web to move from the research labs to
> businesses and then to homes.

No. I was almost there, but know the people who said no to taking
over world-wide exclusive rights to the www from Cern in late 1991,
propmting Cern to have some (then) juniors develop the web server
and a graphical browser. It was all unveiled less than two years
later, in Paris Interop in fall 1993, in a BOF session sponsored by
Cisco.

The graphical browser and the server rewrite took about 18 months.

By November of 1993 it was all becoming the www we know today.

-- mrr
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265564 is a reply to message #265485] Fri, 29 August 2014 08:40 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Peter Flass is currently offline  Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
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Senior Member
<hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, August 28, 2014 11:19:07 AM UTC-4, timca...@aol.com wrote:
>> In 1984 the place I worked at sold terminals for Burroughs systems considerably
>> below what Burroughs charged for their terminals. I believe the price was
>> something like $1700, and they were sold with very little profit (if any).
>> It seems unlikely that IBM would charge as little as $1000 for a 3270.
>
> I am going solely by memory, but in 1984 we were installing a new
> mainframe system and acquiring terminals. I do remember the $1,000 price
> because it represented a cutoff, and the competition (Telex) was noticeably cheaper.
>
>
>
>> Also in 1984 I bought my first micro. A Zenith Z-100. 8088, 192K of memory,
>> 10Meg hard disk, color monitor: $4500 with the educational discount.
>> It was a very good price for that system for several years (even
>> when compared against IBM-PC & clones). (Yeah, I still have it, it has
>> had a few upgrades since then :) ).
>
> $4k for something like that seems expensive. I remember, at that time, a
> colleague buying an "full" IBM XT, with hard drive, 640k, etc., and I
> recall she paid $3,000 for it. (I thought that price was obscene for the
> capability offered).
>
> I bought an 286 clone a few years later, paying $2,000 for it. Everyone
> told me I should've bought a 386 which were just coming out, but the 286
> was plenty for my needs for years. I replaced that with an HP Pentium.

it doesn't pay to plan ahead. I bought my first PC (as opposed to
non-IBM-compatible systems) planning on expanding it. I did add memory
and a second floppy drive, but it was obsolete long before I did anything
more. Now I just buy the system I need *now*, figuring that I'll just buy
something new (cheaper) as my needs change.

--
Pete
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265565 is a reply to message #265554] Fri, 29 August 2014 08:47 Go to previous messageGo to next message
wfw is currently offline  wfw
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Registered: March 2005
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Senior Member
On 8/29/2014 2:28 AM, Jack Myers wrote:
> Don't forget that long-haul telecommunications prices dropped
> significantly during that period. Also, statistical multiplexing evolved
> to accomodate bursty traffic. The wideband long-haul leased lines
> were no longer subdivided into sub-channels, instead the full bandwidth
> might be assigned briefly to a single web page. That web page might draw
> information from geographically diverse servers, something that
> telephone engineers had not anticipated.
>

My favorite article about this is one by Neal Stephenson titled
"Netheads vs Bellheads"
http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.10/atm.html
An excerpt:
"It is a war between the Bellheads and the Netheads. In broad strokes, Bellheads are the original
telephone people. They are the engineers and managers who grew up under the watchful eye of Ma Bell
and who continue to abide by Bell System practices out of respect for Her legacy. They believe in
solving problems with dependable hardware techniques and in rigorous quality control - ideals that
form the basis of our robust phone system and that are incorporated in the ATM protocol.
Opposed to the Bellheads are the Netheads, the young Turks who connected the world's computers to
form the Internet. These engineers see the telecom industry as one more relic that will be
overturned by the march of digital computing. The Netheads believe in intelligent software rather
than brute-force hardware, in flexible and adaptive routing instead of fixed traffic control. It is
these ideals, after all, that have allowed the Internet to grow so quickly and that are
incorporated into IP - the Internet Protocol."
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265570 is a reply to message #265454] Fri, 29 August 2014 09:48 Go to previous messageGo to next message
wfw is currently offline  wfw
Messages: 125
Registered: March 2005
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 8/29/2014 8:16 AM, Soupe du Jour wrote:
> I dialed into local BBSs that were Fidonet nodes, or later on nodes of
> other echo nets, and it made me very aware of the international nature
> of networks. I exchanged messages with quite a few people in other
> countries at the time.
>
> However, it wasn't until I was on the Internet that things like e-mail
> worked immediately. I could have a conversation with someone in
> another country and have e-mails passing back and forth as fast as we
> could read and type. So the Internet was much more live in the way it
> allowed long-distance interactions between people.
>
> It did make me feel a lot closer to my friends in other countries.
> Unfortunately, some of my friendships did not survive my move to the
> Internet. Some people refused to leave the BBS world, and some I just
> lost track of. I only had so much time to spend online, and it was more
> rewarding to spend that time on the Internet than on a BBS. It was like
> getting a new job and telling all of your former co-workers, "Of course
> we'll keep in touch!" You do keep in touch with some, but others you
> never see again.
>

I kept a membership in a local BBS active until it shut down mainly because the owner
of that BBS kept a well organized and curated set of downloadable files handy.

In fact, in spite of all the on-line download websites available today, I have not
found one that I trust as much as I trusted that BBS.
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265572 is a reply to message #265485] Fri, 29 August 2014 10:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
scott is currently offline  scott
Messages: 4237
Registered: February 2012
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Senior Member
hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes:
> On Thursday, August 28, 2014 11:19:07 AM UTC-4, timca...@aol.com wrote:
>> In 1984 the place I worked at sold terminals for Burroughs systems considerably
>> below what Burroughs charged for their terminals. I believe the price was
>> something like $1700, and they were sold with very little profit (if any).
>> It seems unlikely that IBM would charge as little as $1000 for a 3270.
>
> I am going solely by memory, but in 1984 we were installing a new mainframe system and acquiring terminals. I do remember the $1,000 price because it represented a cutoff, and the competition (Telex) was noticeably cheaper.
>
>
>
>> Also in 1984 I bought my first micro. A Zenith Z-100. 8088, 192K of memory,
>> 10Meg hard disk, color monitor: $4500 with the educational discount.
>> It was a very good price for that system for several years (even
>> when compared against IBM-PC & clones). (Yeah, I still have it, it has
>> had a few upgrades since then :) ).
>
> $4k for something like that seems expensive. I remember, at that time, a colleague buying an "full" IBM XT, with hard drive, 640k, etc., and I recall she paid $3,000 for it. (I thought that price was obscene for the capability offered).
>

The first XTs in 1984 with a 10MByte hard disk cost $10,000. A friend of mine
financed his via the big B credit union.

scott
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265573 is a reply to message #265565] Fri, 29 August 2014 10:29 Go to previous messageGo to next message
hancock4 is currently offline  hancock4
Messages: 6746
Registered: December 2011
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Senior Member
On Friday, August 29, 2014 8:47:00 AM UTC-4, Texas wrote:

> "It is a war between the Bellheads and the Netheads. In broad strokes, Bellheads are the original
> telephone people. They are the engineers and managers who grew up under the watchful eye of Ma Bell
> and who continue to abide by Bell System practices out of respect for Her legacy. They believe in
> solving problems with dependable hardware techniques and in rigorous quality control - ideals that
> form the basis of our robust phone system and that are incorporated in the ATM protocol.
> Opposed to the Bellheads are the Netheads, the young Turks who connected the world's computers to
> form the Internet. These engineers see the telecom industry as one more relic that will be
> overturned by the march of digital computing. The Netheads believe in intelligent software rather
> than brute-force hardware, in flexible and adaptive routing instead of fixed traffic control. It is
> these ideals, after all, that have allowed the Internet to grow so quickly and that are
> incorporated into IP - the Internet Protocol."


The above is not exactly accurate. The old Bell System was migrating to software control in 1984. Further, it always had "flexible and adaptive routing" in the network, even with manual control and electro-mechanical switchings. Elecronic switching allowed network management to be faster and more sophisticated.

Adequate hardware is still required to support the Internet. That means reliable equipment and enough 'horsepower' to support demand even in busy times.

In my humble opinion, the 'netheads' have never sought the maximum reliability that was a key hallmark of the old Bell System. Every Bell published article talked about the issues of reliability--having a robust _system_ in the first place (that was thoroughly tested), and then good tools for maintenance and recovery if problems arose.

It frustrates me when using the web, especially in conducting business involving money, to have web pages lock up or act weird; leaving me unsure whether an order was place or a payment made.

Further, we all know that the web was not designed for adequate security, and identify theft, fraud, and other problems are rampant.

I really don't think the 'netheads' understand the old Bell System (and old mainframe) philosophy, indeed, if anything they denigrate legacy practices and technology.

As mentioned, after hurricanes, with electric power out for a week, the traditional landline telephone never stopped working. Other modes can't make that claim.
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265574 is a reply to message #265554] Fri, 29 August 2014 10:31 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel is currently offline  Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel
Messages: 3156
Registered: January 2012
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Senior Member
"Jack Myers" <jmyers@n6wuz.net> writes:
> Don't forget that long-haul telecommunications prices dropped
> significantly during that period. Also, statistical multiplexing evolved
> to accomodate bursty traffic. The wideband long-haul leased lines
> were no longer subdivided into sub-channels, instead the full bandwidth
> might be assigned briefly to a single web page. That web page might draw
> information from geographically diverse servers, something that
> telephone engineers had not anticipated.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#59 No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#60 No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#61 No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#62 No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#63 No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984

I got into several dustups with the communication group while
doing HSDT
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt
and working with NSF on tieing together supercomputer centers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

all had at least T1 (1.5mbits/sec) or better. The communication group
did an analysis for the board that T1 wasn't be needed by customers
before sometime in the early to mid 90s (largely motivated by not having
a mainframe controller product that supported above 56kbits).

the fabrication for the report to the corporate board ... was looking at
customer use of 37x5 "fat pipes" ... which could support multiple
parallel 56kbit lines as single logical link. they showed number
customers having 2, 3, ... 5, 6, etc. link groups ... with the number of
customers dropping to zero by six. the issue that they obfuscated was
that tariffs from the period typically had 5-6 56kbit links about the
same as single T1. Customers that wanted more than 4-5 56kbit link
capacity would install a full T1 supported by a non-IBM mainframe
controller. At the time of the communication groups report to the board,
a trivial survey turned up 200 customers with full T1 supported by
non-IBM mainframe boxes.

The communication group opposition also contributes to the internal politics
that prevents us from bidding on the NSF RFP to connect the NSF
supercomputer centers (which morphs into the NSFNET backbone, precursor
to modern internet). some old email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

Note that the NSF RFP called for T1 interconnect (in part based on our
working with them and already having quite a few T1s operational
internally). The eventual winning response actually deployed 440kbit
links and then somewhat to demonstrate compliance with the letter of the
RFP, they installed T1 trunks with telco multiplexor handling multiple
440kbit links.

I've also mentioned that the communication group was fiercely fighting
off client/server and distributed computing, attempting to preserve
their dumb terminal paradigm ... some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#terminal

In the late 80s, a senior disk engineer gets a talk scheduled at an
annual, internal, world-wide communication group conference that was
supposedly on 3174 controller performance ... but opens with the
statement that the communication group was going to be responsible for
the demise of the disk division. The disk division was seeing data
fleeing the datacenter to more distributed computing friendly platforms
with a fall in disk sales. The disk division had come up with a number
of solutions to correct the problem ... which were constantly being
vetoed by the communication group (which had strategic ownership for
everything that crossed the datacenter walls).

I also got sucked into project that would take some work that was done
at one of the baby bells that simulated 37x5 NCP in a series/1 and
supported a whole lot more function as well as full T1 and faster links.
I was going to turn it out as a series/1 product ... but quickly upgrade
to a RIOS (801/risc chip used in rs/6000) based implementation. This is
old post with part of presentation that I gave at a (communication
group) Oct86 SNA architecture review board meeting in raleigh (somewhat
to tweak them), assuming that every thing had been covered so that the
communication group could stop it (what they then did to block the
project can only be described as truth is much, much stranger than
fiction):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#67 System/1 ?

part of the analysis showing significant benefit of aggregating large
amount of 19.2kbit remote 3270 traffic over T1 links. reference to one
of the baby bell people gave presentation at COMMON user group
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#70 Series/1 as NCP

previous post mentioning the communication group wasn't very happy
about the s/1-based ommunication clone (37x5 emulation) ... they
also weren't very happy with the controller clone that I worked
on when I was undergraduate in the 60s ... some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#360pcm

and controller clones staring in the 60s was major motiviation
for the Future System effort (significantly raise the barrier
with very high level of integration between processor and
controllers) ... some past FS posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

also in the mid-80 period, hsdt was having some equipment built on the
other side of the pacific. I've mentioned before that the friday before
a business trip their ... the communication group distributed an
announcement for a new online discussion group on "high-speed"
communication ... with the following defintion:

low-speed <9.6kbits
medium-speed 19.2kbits
high-speed 56kbits
very high-speed 1.5mbits

monday morning on the wall of a conference room on the
other side of the pacific was:

low-speed <20mbits
medium-speed 100mbits
high-speed 200-300mbits
very high-speed >600mbits

besides the misinformation that the communication group was generating
to the board about customers not needing T1 links ... including
blocking our bidding on the NSF RFP, they were also distributing
fabrication how NSF RFP could be done over SNA/VTAM ... old email
reference
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email870109
in this post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#21 SNA/VTAM for NSFNET

the communication group was also generating quite a bit of
misinformation as part of justifying converting the internal
network to SNA/VTAM ... old email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#email870302
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#email870306

the communication was eventually forced to come out with a rube goldberg
support for T1 ... called the 3737. It simulated local
channel-to-channel adapter to the local mainframe VTAM software ... and
had huge amount of buffering and processing so that it could spoof ACKs
that RUs had arrived at the remote end when it had only arrived at the
local controller (as countermeasure to VTAM processing not capable of
handling latency over long haul T1 links). 3737 was able to sort of
support 2mbits/sec aggregate ... even tho full-duplex T1 is 3mbits/sec
aggregate (and full-duplex european T1 is 4mbits/sec aggregate). some
old email in these posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#email880130
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#email880606
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#email881005

in these posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#75 We list every company in the world that has a mainframe computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#77 Is the magic and romance killed by Windows (and Linux)?

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Re: No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984 [message #265575 is a reply to message #265572] Fri, 29 August 2014 10:39 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Michael Black is currently offline  Michael Black
Messages: 2799
Registered: February 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Fri, 29 Aug 2014, Scott Lurndal wrote:

> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes:
>> On Thursday, August 28, 2014 11:19:07 AM UTC-4, timca...@aol.com wrote:
>>> In 1984 the place I worked at sold terminals for Burroughs systems considerably
>>> below what Burroughs charged for their terminals. I believe the price was
>>> something like $1700, and they were sold with very little profit (if any).
>>> It seems unlikely that IBM would charge as little as $1000 for a 3270.
>>
>> I am going solely by memory, but in 1984 we were installing a new mainframe system and acquiring terminals. I do remember the $1,000 price because it represented a cutoff, and the competition (Telex) was noticeably cheaper.
>>
>>
>>
>>> Also in 1984 I bought my first micro. A Zenith Z-100. 8088, 192K of memory,
>>> 10Meg hard disk, color monitor: $4500 with the educational discount.
>>> It was a very good price for that system for several years (even
>>> when compared against IBM-PC & clones). (Yeah, I still have it, it has
>>> had a few upgrades since then :) ).
>>
>> $4k for something like that seems expensive. I remember, at that time, a colleague buying an "full" IBM XT, with hard drive, 640k, etc., and I recall she paid $3,000 for it. (I thought that price was obscene for the capability offered).
>>
>
> The first XTs in 1984 with a 10MByte hard disk cost $10,000. A friend of mine
> financed his via the big B credit union.
>
I'd meant to say previously that hard drives took a long time to become
"affordable", but I guess I was forgetting that even in 1984, they were
still pretty expensive. And you certainly didn't get that much for the
money.

SHortly after 1984, there were systems being reviewed in Byte that could
run Unix (or a variant) and they were great to hear about, but in a whole
different price category, even though they were nominally the same
hardware as the "IBM PC". It's just they were maxed out with memory,which
wa still expensive, and had the all important hard drive.

Michael
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