5 ms·

my first hard drive was 500mb and was about $500. also bought an external 2x CD rom drive, which had a caddy and came with Myst, for $700. this was around the e

my first hard drive was 500mb and was about $500. also bought an external 2x CD rom drive, which had a caddy and came with Myst, for $700. this was around the early-mid 90's.

nnutter 9y ago
Had to get the 2x so you could get realtime audio! 1x would stutter.
- simcop2387 9y ago
  Unless your sound card had the ide interface or you managed to have the right audio cable to connect the drive to it and let the drive do the playing with not controls for yourself.
joering2 9y ago
The hard drive you been waiting for... http://media02.hongkiat.com/vintage-tech-ads/hardisk-waiting-for.jpg http://media02.hongkiat.com/vintage-tech-ads/hardisk-waiting...
- jacquesm 9y ago
  'priceless' ;)
- aidenn0 9y ago
  And don't forget that you could get a pretty nice used car for that price back then (and a new compact car for less than twice that).
- FullyFunctional 9y ago
  My favorite part: "Also available from XCOMP: General Purpose controllers (8 bit interface), with easy interface to microprocessor-based systems." Contemplate this for a moment. Not exactly plug-and-play!
gist 9y ago
Hah! 10mb in an IBM clone in the 80's. Later a 70mb Unix box was able to run an entire business (10 Wyse Terminals) with that. 4mb of memory iirc. The 70mb Unix drives were iirc about $4000 in 80's dollars. Or maybe that was the 4mb of memory. I actually have the sales brochure and have to dig that up. Edit: Yes I do mean 10MB!
- tetha 9y ago
  our first 286 at home eventually got upgraded with a 10 mb HDD. you could store 3 entire floppies on that, and those games would load so fast. And then you had monsters like DoTT or Monkey Island coming on 12 floopies or so. Haha. 30G or so for War of the Chosen still boggles my mind sometimes.
  - vanviegen 9y ago
    I think you mean about 30 floppies, at 360kb each, right?
- redler 9y ago
  Luxury! I paid $400 to have the 400K floppy drive in my Mac 512K upgraded to an 800K drive. And we liked it.
- mikestew 9y ago
  Edit: Yes I do mean 10MB! Oh, I believe you. I say that because I was skimming to see if anyone could "beat" me. You tied. :-) And the only reason I was skimming was to comment to parent, who said they thought they'd never fill a 13Gb drive: yeah, that's what I thought when I bought a 10Mb drive 30 years ago. Now, I don't think you can even buy media that small. Hell, the internet is infested with single web pages that wouldn't fit on that drive.
- userbinator 9y ago
  Hard drives back then actually had capacities in binary megabytes, and often even slightly more. The "10MB" HDD in the first PCs held 10653696 bytes, and the "5MB" one 5326848 bytes.
red75prime 9y ago
My first HDD was 20MB (МС 5405), a part of decommissioned Interactive Computer System МС 0502.02, featuring whopping 0.8 MIPS and 248KB RAM. 1991.
- fnj 9y ago
  You completely missed the drawn of HDDs with the ST506 5MB, and the big breakthrough when the much faster 10MB ST512 replaced it? Those were the exciting days.
rconti 9y ago
Yeah, I think the first GOOD computer we had that I really monkeyed with (ignoring the XT we pawned off on my sister when she went to college) was a 486 with a 250mb hard disk, so I remember purchasing a 560MB seagate to expand capacity and boot Linux from.
dboreham 9y ago
Mine was an ST-506 : 5MB, 5.25" First moderately modern drive was a Rodime 3.5" 10MB. Smuggled out of the factory somehow (which was just down the road from where I worked). That was the first drive that looked like they still do today.

my first hard drive was 500mb and was about $500. also bought an external 2x CD rom drive, which had a caddy and came with Myst, for $700. this was around the early-mid 90's.

nnutter 9y ago

Had to get the 2x so you could get realtime audio! 1x would stutter.

simcop2387 9y ago
Unless your sound card had the ide interface or you managed to have the right audio cable to connect the drive to it and let the drive do the playing with not controls for yourself.

joering2 9y ago

The hard drive you been waiting for... http://media02.hongkiat.com/vintage-tech-ads/hardisk-waiting-for.jpg http://media02.hongkiat.com/vintage-tech-ads/hardisk-waiting...

jacquesm 9y ago
'priceless' ;)
aidenn0 9y ago
And don't forget that you could get a pretty nice used car for that price back then (and a new compact car for less than twice that).
FullyFunctional 9y ago
My favorite part: "Also available from XCOMP: General Purpose controllers (8 bit interface), with easy interface to microprocessor-based systems." Contemplate this for a moment. Not exactly plug-and-play!

gist 9y ago

Hah! 10mb in an IBM clone in the 80's. Later a 70mb Unix box was able to run an entire business (10 Wyse Terminals) with that. 4mb of memory iirc. The 70mb Unix drives were iirc about $4000 in 80's dollars. Or maybe that was the 4mb of memory. I actually have the sales brochure and have to dig that up. Edit: Yes I do mean 10MB!

tetha 9y ago
our first 286 at home eventually got upgraded with a 10 mb HDD. you could store 3 entire floppies on that, and those games would load so fast. And then you had monsters like DoTT or Monkey Island coming on 12 floopies or so. Haha. 30G or so for War of the Chosen still boggles my mind sometimes.
- vanviegen 9y ago
  I think you mean about 30 floppies, at 360kb each, right?
redler 9y ago
Luxury! I paid $400 to have the 400K floppy drive in my Mac 512K upgraded to an 800K drive. And we liked it.
mikestew 9y ago
Edit: Yes I do mean 10MB! Oh, I believe you. I say that because I was skimming to see if anyone could "beat" me. You tied. :-) And the only reason I was skimming was to comment to parent, who said they thought they'd never fill a 13Gb drive: yeah, that's what I thought when I bought a 10Mb drive 30 years ago. Now, I don't think you can even buy media that small. Hell, the internet is infested with single web pages that wouldn't fit on that drive.
userbinator 9y ago
Hard drives back then actually had capacities in binary megabytes, and often even slightly more. The "10MB" HDD in the first PCs held 10653696 bytes, and the "5MB" one 5326848 bytes.

red75prime 9y ago

My first HDD was 20MB (МС 5405), a part of decommissioned Interactive Computer System МС 0502.02, featuring whopping 0.8 MIPS and 248KB RAM. 1991.

fnj 9y ago
You completely missed the drawn of HDDs with the ST506 5MB, and the big breakthrough when the much faster 10MB ST512 replaced it? Those were the exciting days.

rconti 9y ago

Yeah, I think the first GOOD computer we had that I really monkeyed with (ignoring the XT we pawned off on my sister when she went to college) was a 486 with a 250mb hard disk, so I remember purchasing a 560MB seagate to expand capacity and boot Linux from.

dboreham 9y ago

Mine was an ST-506 : 5MB, 5.25" First moderately modern drive was a Rodime 3.5" 10MB. Smuggled out of the factory somehow (which was just down the road from where I worked). That was the first drive that looked like they still do today.