5 ms·

They would be $248 adjusted for inflation. But those tiny home computers came without a screen, hard disk, networking, a real OS, or pretty much anything we tak

They would be $248 adjusted for inflation. But those tiny home computers came without a screen, hard disk, networking, a real OS, or pretty much anything we take for granted today. That $400 laptop packs in a ton of tech.

stormbrew 8y ago
Many of them could just use your TV as display though, which went away pretty quick in the PC era.
- yellowapple 8y ago
  And then came back when TVs started to ship with modern input ports.
  - flukus 8y ago
    And may go the other way again now that we can't avoid smart TV's.
    - yellowapple 8y ago
      Which annoys me to no end. I already have a Fire TV, a Chromecast, and multiple actual PCs. An additional computer that I can't replace or upgrade is useless to me, and it's even more frustrating when it gets in the way of using the TV for its intended purpose. I don't understand why it's so hard for companies to build 4k dumb TVs. If anything it should be easier and cheaper to not include a bunch of smarts, right?
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Many of them could just use your TV as display though, which went away pretty quick in the PC era. Composite (and, later on, S-video) outputs were common on third-party CGA, EGA, and (S)VGA cards (not sure if official IBM ones did, but third party were more common.) Also, I think that Tandy’s quite popular proprietary graphics did. And VGA to composite, component, and S-Video adapters were all readily available, too. And later, this shifted to HDMI being common for both video cards and TVs; the ability to use your TV as a PC display never went away, though TVs couldn't handle (until the HD era) the higher resolution modes used for text and later graphics (though it wasn't until SVGA that that became an issue for most games, which tends to favor higher color offer higher resolution modes.)
  - stormbrew 8y ago
    I had quite a few VGA video cards over that period of time and I think I only ever had one each that could do composite or svideo. I think at best it's something you could go out of your way for if you wanted but I don't remember it ever being the default. And definitely not on any integrated graphics on a motherboard that I can remember in the 386 to DVI/HDMI era.
    - hakfoo 8y ago
      There was a period where a lot of cards were sold with "TV out" as a bullet point-- usually a weird little port that connected to a breakout cable to provide S-video and/or component and composite. This seemed to be most common in the late AGP and early PCI-E era -- Geforce 2/3/4/FX/6, Radeon 8xxx/9xxx cards. Before that, you could either get a "scan converter" which would convert VGA into composite video, or a specialty monitor which was typically a 27" or 32" CRT TB capable of synching to 640x480 VGA. When flat-panel TVs started coming out they typically had a VGA or DVI port, and shortly thereafter HDMI, so it became moot.
      - stormbrew 8y ago
        Keep in mind here that the topic is cheap computers and once you get into scan converters and agp and pci-e gpus, let alone special monitors, we're well outside that realm.

stormbrew 8y ago

Many of them could just use your TV as display though, which went away pretty quick in the PC era.

yellowapple 8y ago
And then came back when TVs started to ship with modern input ports.
- flukus 8y ago
  And may go the other way again now that we can't avoid smart TV's.
  - yellowapple 8y ago
    Which annoys me to no end. I already have a Fire TV, a Chromecast, and multiple actual PCs. An additional computer that I can't replace or upgrade is useless to me, and it's even more frustrating when it gets in the way of using the TV for its intended purpose. I don't understand why it's so hard for companies to build 4k dumb TVs. If anything it should be easier and cheaper to not include a bunch of smarts, right?
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Many of them could just use your TV as display though, which went away pretty quick in the PC era. Composite (and, later on, S-video) outputs were common on third-party CGA, EGA, and (S)VGA cards (not sure if official IBM ones did, but third party were more common.) Also, I think that Tandy’s quite popular proprietary graphics did. And VGA to composite, component, and S-Video adapters were all readily available, too. And later, this shifted to HDMI being common for both video cards and TVs; the ability to use your TV as a PC display never went away, though TVs couldn't handle (until the HD era) the higher resolution modes used for text and later graphics (though it wasn't until SVGA that that became an issue for most games, which tends to favor higher color offer higher resolution modes.)
- stormbrew 8y ago
  I had quite a few VGA video cards over that period of time and I think I only ever had one each that could do composite or svideo. I think at best it's something you could go out of your way for if you wanted but I don't remember it ever being the default. And definitely not on any integrated graphics on a motherboard that I can remember in the 386 to DVI/HDMI era.
  - hakfoo 8y ago
    There was a period where a lot of cards were sold with "TV out" as a bullet point-- usually a weird little port that connected to a breakout cable to provide S-video and/or component and composite. This seemed to be most common in the late AGP and early PCI-E era -- Geforce 2/3/4/FX/6, Radeon 8xxx/9xxx cards. Before that, you could either get a "scan converter" which would convert VGA into composite video, or a specialty monitor which was typically a 27" or 32" CRT TB capable of synching to 640x480 VGA. When flat-panel TVs started coming out they typically had a VGA or DVI port, and shortly thereafter HDMI, so it became moot.
    - stormbrew 8y ago
      Keep in mind here that the topic is cheap computers and once you get into scan converters and agp and pci-e gpus, let alone special monitors, we're well outside that realm.