Re: Tech This Year

["Patrick Lidstone" <patrick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

--- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, "Graham Howe" <graham@s...> wrote:
> > I bought my first CD burner jay back in the eighties, plunked=20
> > down $1200 for a 1x burner. I made a lot of $10 coasters. Now=20
> > a 52x burner is under $100 and blanks are very cheap.
>=20
> Yeah, and I remember paying =A3500 for an extra 16Mb of RAM in the=20
> first PC I bought in 1996, last week I bought about 30 times as=20
> much memory for just over a tenth of the price. And don't even get=20
> me started on the depreciation of the laptops I've bought over the=20
> past 7 years!

This thread will probably spiral wildly out of control/OT, but whilst=20
we are reminiscing, I have a luggable PC in my attic I bought in 1990=20
for (I think) GBP 2,600 - a huge sum at the time, but it was state-of-
the-art hardware - with an orange VGA phosphorescent screen, 16MB=20
RAM, 120GB hard disk, 5.25 and 3.5 disks and a 386DX processor. It=20
ran Win3.1 for a while, before migrating to an early release of the=20
slackware Linux distro - I'd guess around mid 93/early 94 - and=20
supporting two concurrent users, one via a serial console, on a=20
research project. Last time I dusted it off, it still booted - not a=20
bad old workhorse. Perhaps we should have a retro-hardware session as=20
part of the UKHA meet?

Patrick