Good stuff on a Sunday morning.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Friday, November 06, 2009
Progress of computers
I know it's an endless story, but I was reminded of it as I built up a new computer over the last few days. It's amazing to think of the pace of computers has been over the last three decades that I have been using them.
My first computer, circa, 1980 was a zx81. I was a teenager eager to learn how to program a computer. It had 2k of memory and a very slow cassette storage mechanism. But it used a standard audio cassette player. Does anyone even know what that is?
Then I got the color version, sold in the US as a Sinclair 2068. This was the age of the Apple IIe.
Not being able to afford an Apple, I got my hands on a Commodore 64 and had a blast. It had 64 k of memory but a slow 5-1/2 disk drive that stored around 170k of data.
Finally after college, I got a decent PC (1991 or so) that sported Windows 3.1 and a huge drive of 220 MB. I sweated over the details on this one since it was around $3000. All that sweat was rendered obsolete soon after.
The story remains the same; Yesterday, I built up a new computer which has 4GB ram and a 1-Terrabyte hard drive. Yes, 1-Terrabyte = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes.
And the scary part is, it's really not a big deal these days.
My first real pc (1991) cost $3000 and had
200 MB Hard Drive
Intel 486 processor running at 20 MHz or something like that
8 MB RAM
cheeseball graphics
Windows 3.1
The computer I built yesterday (A very conservative build) cost less than $600 and has
1 TB Hard Drive
AMD Athlon II 4-core processor running at 2.6 GHz
4GB RAM
High speed 512 MB3D graphics card with two DVI outputs
Windows 7
I also found some interesting things while cleaning up:
Lotus 1-2-3. It pushed the need for computers to go beyond the 640k memory barrier in the 1980's
Mosaic. One of the first ways to browse the web.
My first computer, circa, 1980 was a zx81. I was a teenager eager to learn how to program a computer. It had 2k of memory and a very slow cassette storage mechanism. But it used a standard audio cassette player. Does anyone even know what that is?
Then I got the color version, sold in the US as a Sinclair 2068. This was the age of the Apple IIe.
Not being able to afford an Apple, I got my hands on a Commodore 64 and had a blast. It had 64 k of memory but a slow 5-1/2 disk drive that stored around 170k of data.
Finally after college, I got a decent PC (1991 or so) that sported Windows 3.1 and a huge drive of 220 MB. I sweated over the details on this one since it was around $3000. All that sweat was rendered obsolete soon after.
The story remains the same; Yesterday, I built up a new computer which has 4GB ram and a 1-Terrabyte hard drive. Yes, 1-Terrabyte = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes.
And the scary part is, it's really not a big deal these days.
My first real pc (1991) cost $3000 and had
200 MB Hard Drive
Intel 486 processor running at 20 MHz or something like that
8 MB RAM
cheeseball graphics
Windows 3.1
The computer I built yesterday (A very conservative build) cost less than $600 and has
1 TB Hard Drive
AMD Athlon II 4-core processor running at 2.6 GHz
4GB RAM
High speed 512 MB3D graphics card with two DVI outputs
Windows 7
I also found some interesting things while cleaning up:
Lotus 1-2-3. It pushed the need for computers to go beyond the 640k memory barrier in the 1980's
Mosaic. One of the first ways to browse the web.
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