3 ms·

Tangent: TRS-80 Model III was advertised at $8,326.63 in 2023 dollars! (page 36)

musicale 4y ago
The whole magazine is great. The scope and quality are impressive - from the Xerox Alto (and its GUI/mouse/Ethernet) to Tony Hoare's Turing lecture to AI research to programming and circuit projects to product reviews. Even the ads are interesting (and not just in retrospect I think.) Like an Osborne "briefcase" computer ad on page 33. Cheaper than the Model III, more "portable", and it runs (HN favorite) CP/M out of the box. Less than $6K adjusted for inflation - cheaper than a specced out MacBook Pro! And since the Osborne's storage (dual 100KB floppy drives) is removable, you could in principle exceed the MacBook Pro's aggregate 8TB SSD storage capacity with only 80 million floppy disks.
jgalt212 4y ago
yes, but rent and housing (inflation adjusted) were much cheaper.
- musicale 4y ago
  Higher education was drastically cheaper back then as well. For example, Berkeley tuition for was $510 for three quarters in 1981 ($1700 adjusted for inflation) vs. $12K for two semesters today. (Note that nonresidents also have to pay an additional $30K in "nonresident supplemental tuition.")
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  and we now need 4 ipads and iphones plus a few macbooks per family, but you only needed one of these
  - jgalt212 4y ago
    The money has to go somewhere. Apple, Disney, Taylor Swift, and many others are very good at grabbing the lion's share of the middle class wallet.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Well, it depends where. People were moving out of what we now consider "elite" US cities in droves well into the 1990s. So many of those cities were pretty inexpensive by today's standards. Of course, most of the jobs were out in the suburbs/exurbs where people actually wanted to live. But, yes, in general anything that's primarily electronic is (relatively speaking) ridiculously cheap today while desirable land and personal services cost a lot.
hirundo 4y ago
I bought one that year for $500 (1981 dollars) from a guy in his garage, my first non-Heathkit computer. I don't know the provenance but don't think it fell off a truck. It had a cassette system for storage. The seller told me he had a 5MB hard disk available for $5,000.
whyenot 4y ago
Around that time my dad bought a Z80 S-100 bus system (made by Thinkertoys) with 64k memory, two 8” disk drives, and a terminal for $14,726 in 2023 dollars. Hacking and tinkering with microcomputers could be a very expensive hobby, in the early days.
- narrator 4y ago
  Hacking and tinkering with AI can be expensive today. A machine with an A100 is about that pricey. Thankfully, now we have the cloud.
jhbadger 4y ago
At the time it really was a serious decision by nerdy teenagers whether to get a computer or a used car. You generally couldn't afford both. Computers are insanely cheap today.
- readyplayernull 4y ago
  > Computers are insanely cheap today. That includes software.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Even as a working engineer a couple years later buying a PC clone (without hard drive) was a major decision. Probably 20+% of before-tax salary. And, yes, something like a C complier was a very non-trivial purchase as well.
leejoramo 4y ago
That was my first computer, but I had the low end $999 version with 16k and only an only audio cassettes for storage. This is what most people purchased Over the years, I would upgrade it with third party floppy drives and more RAM to bring it up-to the high end model. That high end model in the ad was effectively like today’s Mac Pro or Dell Precision and almost certainly include TRS-DOS which on its own was an expensive software

The whole magazine is great. The scope and quality are impressive - from the Xerox Alto (and its GUI/mouse/Ethernet) to Tony Hoare's Turing lecture to AI research to programming and circuit projects to product reviews. Even the ads are interesting (and not just in retrospect I think.) Like an Osborne "briefcase" computer ad on page 33. Cheaper than the Model III, more "portable", and it runs (HN favorite) CP/M out of the box. Less than $6K adjusted for inflation - cheaper than a specced out MacBook Pro! And since the Osborne's storage (dual 100KB floppy drives) is removable, you could in principle exceed the MacBook Pro's aggregate 8TB SSD storage capacity with only 80 million floppy disks.

jgalt212 4y ago

yes, but rent and housing (inflation adjusted) were much cheaper.

musicale 4y ago
Higher education was drastically cheaper back then as well. For example, Berkeley tuition for was $510 for three quarters in 1981 ($1700 adjusted for inflation) vs. $12K for two semesters today. (Note that nonresidents also have to pay an additional $30K in "nonresident supplemental tuition.")
quickthrower2 4y ago
and we now need 4 ipads and iphones plus a few macbooks per family, but you only needed one of these
- jgalt212 4y ago
  The money has to go somewhere. Apple, Disney, Taylor Swift, and many others are very good at grabbing the lion's share of the middle class wallet.
ghaff 4y ago
Well, it depends where. People were moving out of what we now consider "elite" US cities in droves well into the 1990s. So many of those cities were pretty inexpensive by today's standards. Of course, most of the jobs were out in the suburbs/exurbs where people actually wanted to live. But, yes, in general anything that's primarily electronic is (relatively speaking) ridiculously cheap today while desirable land and personal services cost a lot.

hirundo 4y ago

I bought one that year for $500 (1981 dollars) from a guy in his garage, my first non-Heathkit computer. I don't know the provenance but don't think it fell off a truck. It had a cassette system for storage. The seller told me he had a 5MB hard disk available for $5,000.

whyenot 4y ago

Around that time my dad bought a Z80 S-100 bus system (made by Thinkertoys) with 64k memory, two 8” disk drives, and a terminal for $14,726 in 2023 dollars. Hacking and tinkering with microcomputers could be a very expensive hobby, in the early days.

narrator 4y ago
Hacking and tinkering with AI can be expensive today. A machine with an A100 is about that pricey. Thankfully, now we have the cloud.

jhbadger 4y ago

At the time it really was a serious decision by nerdy teenagers whether to get a computer or a used car. You generally couldn't afford both. Computers are insanely cheap today.

readyplayernull 4y ago
> Computers are insanely cheap today. That includes software.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Even as a working engineer a couple years later buying a PC clone (without hard drive) was a major decision. Probably 20+% of before-tax salary. And, yes, something like a C complier was a very non-trivial purchase as well.

leejoramo 4y ago

That was my first computer, but I had the low end $999 version with 16k and only an only audio cassettes for storage. This is what most people purchased Over the years, I would upgrade it with third party floppy drives and more RAM to bring it up-to the high end model. That high end model in the ad was effectively like today’s Mac Pro or Dell Precision and almost certainly include TRS-DOS which on its own was an expensive software