this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
570 points (97.8% liked)

Technology

59454 readers
3354 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

How much would you pay for a PC with 128KB RAM, and no hard disk?

In today's money (inflation adjusted)

This an ad from Personal Computer World (UK) from 1985

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Serious question: What did you use that computer for? So, did you just learn to write cobol and make your own programs?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don’t know about the OP, but our first computer was a TRS-80 clone with a tape drive, 16k ram, and stunning 64x16 B&W graphics. Every month dad would drive us to computer club, we’d copy as many games as we could (onto tape), then spend the rest of the month trying to get them to work. Rinse and repeat. It was awesome.

Also typed in basic games from the computer mags which needed lots of debugging. How I learnt to program (before being taught Pascal in high school).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Typing in the games could be both fun and highly frustrating. I had an Apple II and if you fucked up on a line, you probably weren't going to be able to find it and fix it. There was no debugger and typing LIST would show you the whole thing and you couldn't scroll up. So if you did it right, it was great. If you messed up somewhere, good luck.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't remember much on the apple, but in commodore basic you could do LIST 50-80 for example, I'm willing to bet the apple could too...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You probably could and I just never knew it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I do have a funny story about the place I got it in San Francisco, of you care to hear it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

So what’s the story man? Come on, some of us are invested already.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Absolutely! Please do continue.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just used it for writing papers in college.

I had no idea how to use COBOL.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Ok, so it was more like a digital typewriter to you.