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Sinclair ZX-80 was $625 in today's prices when it was released in 1980. Not too crazy. EDIT: You could get an assembler/dis-assembler for the ZX-81 for $20 (19
by nsguy 2y ago
Sinclair ZX-80 was $625 in today's prices when it was released in 1980. Not too crazy.
EDIT: You could get an assembler/dis-assembler for the ZX-81 for $20 (1982). Also at the time a lot of software was "shared" between enthusiasts.
- ghaff 2y agoThere were some very clearly hobbyist computers like the Sinclair. Also Commodore 64 that were fairly cheap in the early 80s. But get into anything like a PC clone--much less anything with a hard drive--and the prices went up fast.
- nsguy 2y agoSure. Until the flood of Taiwanese clones brought the price down the cost of a "proper" IBM-PC was high. I thought we were talking "personal computers" more broadly here though. The IBM-PC was released mid 1981...
- ghaff 2y agoThere were basically some toys that let you do a bit of BASIC or whatever hooked up to your 13” TV. But S-100 bus, Apple, or PC clones weren’t cheap.
- nsguy 2y agoThey were general purpose computers. You could do BASIC or machine language and run other software on them. Lots of software developers grew up on those.
- musicale 2y agoDefinitely true, especially considering the original Apple II, whose base model came with 4K of RAM and didn't include a floating point BASIC. Of course the real Apple II competitor from Sinclair was the ZX Spectrum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum