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Not to brag but I got a 4.77MHz 8086 XT PC for my 8th birthday :) It had a whopping 256KB of RAM, a monochrome display (later upgraded to a 4 color CGA that ble

Not to brag but I got a 4.77MHz 8086 XT PC for my 8th birthday :) It had a whopping 256KB of RAM, a monochrome display (later upgraded to a 4 color CGA that blew my mind), and two (yes, TWO) Floppy drives.

a9h74j 7y ago
And a decade before, the distributor DigiKey presented as a one-column advertisement in Popular Electronics, selling 7400 DIP ICs for $0.29 . Inflation-adjusted, that $0.29 now buys a an IC that can run Linux.
cubano 7y ago
My dad got one of those for us both to use...what was truly "whopping" about it was its price... If I remember right it was almost $3k...but that included that blazing fast 300bps Hayes modem for wide-area networking. And my mind was truly blown when we replaced the 2nd floppy with a more-memory-then-we-will-EVER-need 20MB hard drive...what could we do with all those bits??
- xenospn 7y ago
  Same! We got 640kb of ram and a mouse! The HDD didn’t arrive until we got a 286, tho.
- nonamenoslogan 7y ago
  Yeah the prices were crazy! My first was a 10Mhz AMD 286 clone with 1mb and a 40mb HDD. I recall it being $2600 with a 13” SVGA monitor.
lioeters 7y ago
> 8086 XT PC for my 8th birthday Wow, I admire the far-sightedness of your parents, to give a child a computer at such a young age (and in those early days of PCs). I was of a similar age when my dad brought home an NEC PC 9801 - with an 8086 CPU (8MHz), 640KB RAM, kanji (~3000 characters) font ROM, even a Japanese word processor. I think it ran MS-DOS 2~3. "In 1987, NEC announced one million PC-98s were shipped." That was a big wave, and I'm so glad my parents let me play with a computer as a "toy" - it was a huge influence on my mental development. Kinda like the monolith moment in 2001: A Space Odyssey. :)
- xenospn 7y ago
  My parents had no idea, and they couldn't afford it anyway :) My dad asked his cousin, who happened to be working with PCs way, way back and recommended he get a PC instead of a C64 which is what everyone else had. My dad asked his dad and my grandfather forked over what must have been an insane amount back in 1980's Israel.
  - lioeters 7y ago
    Aww, that's so nice that your dad asked around and pulled resources together for you. And I'm sure grandfather knew it was a worthy investment in your future. My friends around that age all had a wildly popular video game console called Nintendo "Fami-Com". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System My parents refused to buy it, and instead let me play with the PC-98, where I learned BASIC, Turbo Pascal, even some 8086 assembly language. I suppose if I have children, I'd discourage mobile phones/apps and instead give them Raspberry Pi, microcomputers, sensors, devices they can build stuff with.

a9h74j 7y ago

And a decade before, the distributor DigiKey presented as a one-column advertisement in Popular Electronics, selling 7400 DIP ICs for $0.29 . Inflation-adjusted, that $0.29 now buys a an IC that can run Linux.

cubano 7y ago

My dad got one of those for us both to use...what was truly "whopping" about it was its price... If I remember right it was almost $3k...but that included that blazing fast 300bps Hayes modem for wide-area networking. And my mind was truly blown when we replaced the 2nd floppy with a more-memory-then-we-will-EVER-need 20MB hard drive...what could we do with all those bits??

xenospn 7y ago
Same! We got 640kb of ram and a mouse! The HDD didn’t arrive until we got a 286, tho.
nonamenoslogan 7y ago
Yeah the prices were crazy! My first was a 10Mhz AMD 286 clone with 1mb and a 40mb HDD. I recall it being $2600 with a 13” SVGA monitor.

lioeters 7y ago

> 8086 XT PC for my 8th birthday Wow, I admire the far-sightedness of your parents, to give a child a computer at such a young age (and in those early days of PCs). I was of a similar age when my dad brought home an NEC PC 9801 - with an 8086 CPU (8MHz), 640KB RAM, kanji (~3000 characters) font ROM, even a Japanese word processor. I think it ran MS-DOS 2~3. "In 1987, NEC announced one million PC-98s were shipped." That was a big wave, and I'm so glad my parents let me play with a computer as a "toy" - it was a huge influence on my mental development. Kinda like the monolith moment in 2001: A Space Odyssey. :)

xenospn 7y ago
My parents had no idea, and they couldn't afford it anyway :) My dad asked his cousin, who happened to be working with PCs way, way back and recommended he get a PC instead of a C64 which is what everyone else had. My dad asked his dad and my grandfather forked over what must have been an insane amount back in 1980's Israel.
- lioeters 7y ago
  Aww, that's so nice that your dad asked around and pulled resources together for you. And I'm sure grandfather knew it was a worthy investment in your future. My friends around that age all had a wildly popular video game console called Nintendo "Fami-Com". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System My parents refused to buy it, and instead let me play with the PC-98, where I learned BASIC, Turbo Pascal, even some 8086 assembly language. I suppose if I have children, I'd discourage mobile phones/apps and instead give them Raspberry Pi, microcomputers, sensors, devices they can build stuff with.