3 ms·
A 48K ZX Spectrum (the most popular model) sold for 129GBP in June 1983. According to the first Google result I get for "uk rpi inflation calculator"[0], that's
by mrob 4y ago
A 48K ZX Spectrum (the most popular model) sold for 129GBP in June 1983. According to the first Google result I get for "uk rpi inflation calculator"[0], that's equivalent to 523GBP today. It was typically used with a television as the display, which most families would already have. The usual data storage system was cassette tapes, which were also widespread at the time, although it was common for people to buy cheap dedicated tape recorders for their microcomputers. Not as cheap as the options we have now, but most people who really wanted one could have found a way to afford it.
[0] https://www.hl.co.uk/tools/calculators/inflation-calculator https://www.hl.co.uk/tools/calculators/inflation-calculator
- ghaff 4y agoRight. That's why I mentioned the Commodore 64 which was probably roughly similar in capabilities and price. Doing programming on such a system was pretty different from a PC-compatible however. But it was absolutely a way for kids to get started.
- zozbot234 4y agoCassette tapes were an awful storage medium though. They were just about usable enough for loading software from previously written tapes, and even that was slow. Floppy disk media was a total game changer, allowing for some amount of actual productive work even on the old 8-bit machines.
- shever73 4y agoThey weren’t ideal, but I owe my career to writing games for the ZX Spectrum and distributing them on cassette. It wasn’t until 1988 that I was able to get an Amstrad PC1512 with floppy drives.
- IMSAI8080 4y agoA commodore 1541 disk drive for the C64 originally cost 300GBP on it's own at launch (1982 prices before inflation). That's more than the cost of a home computer at the time just for the drive. That's why careers were started with cassette tapes regardless of the limitations.