# Least Powerful (not PowerFull) PC?



## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

Is this the Least Powerful (not PowerFull) but most Expensive personal PC...?










...and I thought the Compaq Presario (80486), monitor & printer I bought at the end
of 1994 cost a ton at $3,000.


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## Draconis (Mar 16, 2007)

Oh man, that brings back memories.


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## cadet502 (Jun 17, 2005)

> monitor and mouse not included


LOL

Doesn't even mention a hard drive. At first I thought the main reason for the big price was the 2megs of ram, that was a lot in 89.

I paid over $3000 for a 386SX in 89, but at least it came with a monitor and mouse, and a 20meg hard drive. I think it may have had a whopping 512k ram.


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## Draconis (Mar 16, 2007)

512k is more than enough *cadet502*, especially if you listen to Bill Gates

"Nobody will ever need more than 512k RAM" - Bill Gates, 1981


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## smiddy (Apr 5, 2006)

Whoa! I forgot about those days.


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

smiddy said:


> Whoa! I forgot about those days.


you obviously needed a memory upgrade.


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

'Lightning fast 20Mhz' :lol:

Is that Adobe PageMaker? OS/2 how I miss thee. NOT!


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## dave29 (Feb 18, 2007)

wow, thats funny. where did you dig that up at?


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## Pinion413 (Oct 21, 2007)

That's quite amusing. Even though I was a young'n, I still remember those days quite well. It's amazing to see how far home computing technology has come in the last 20 years. :lol:


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## BaldEagle (Jun 19, 2006)

Seems like we paid about that in the office I worked at in 1983. IBM computer with 256RAM (could have been 512), 5" floppy, no software, and no hard drive. The first time we used it to combine 32 stores P & L's for a district total it ran out of memory. Had to buy more ram and I think that (additional 256) cost over $700. 

We also paid over $400 for a Lotus123 number cruncher software program to do the P & L's and over $350 for word perfect to do any correspondence.


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## djlong (Jul 8, 2002)

I have "Creative Computing" issues from the late 1970s. The ads in there are like a history lesson.


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## HIPAR (May 15, 2005)

I'm wasn't exactly poor back then but I wouldn't spend that kind of money on a PC either now or then.

--- CHAS


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## B Newt (Aug 12, 2007)

Steve Mehs said:


> 'Lightning fast 20Mhz' :lol:
> 
> Is that Adobe PageMaker? OS/2 how I miss thee. NOT!


OS/2 blewaway the original version of windoz!:thats:


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## HIPAR (May 15, 2005)

B Newt said:


> OS/2 blewaway the original version of windoz!:thats:


OS2 had the same problem Linux has today; poor device support. I have a copy of OS2 Warp collecting dust somewhere in my basement. I couldn't get the video working properly so I went back to Windoze.

--- CHAS


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## 4DThinker (Dec 17, 2006)

It's hard to believe it's not a typo where the 8499 was really supposed to be $499, and the type setters doing the ad didn't have a "$" to use, or at least failed to read the poorly written ad copy and mistook the $ for an 8.


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

Not hardly - in 1989, those specs were fairly high-end, and you have to about double
the price because it was sold by Radio Shack. Back then there was no such thing
as a $499 pc.


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## HighVoltage (Nov 27, 2007)

Nick said:


> Back then there was no such thing
> as a $499 pc.


 Guess it depends on your definition of PC (personal computer)... Amiga, Atari St, Apple IIgs, etc. all fell around that price.


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## bobnielsen (Jun 29, 2006)

I think my first PC in 1985 was around $2500 (Compaq 8086 DeskPro). I found a lot of software wouldn't run on it.


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

Hardly. The first IBM PC I worked on, which was the first IBM PC, had a 4.77MHz (.00477 GHz) processor and one floppy drive, no hard drive. 128K (.125MB, roughly .001GB) of memory.


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## cadet502 (Jun 17, 2005)

Stuart Sweet said:


> Hardly. The first IBM PC I worked on, which was the first IBM PC, had a 4.77MHz (.00477 GHz) processor and one floppy drive, no hard drive. 128K (.125MB, roughly .001GB) of memory.


Sounds like as much fun as a DEC "robin". Can't recall the speed or memory, but I remember when we added a second dual floppy drive, we were cooking with gas. Imagine being able to run the O/S, dBaseII?, and a data disk without having to swap floppies. :grin:


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