# BestBuy - 1996



## Marlin Guy (Apr 8, 2009)

Sale Flier


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## Marlin Guy (Apr 8, 2009)

The $2000 Packard Bell PC is frightening.
Those things were crap through and through!


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## BosFan (Sep 28, 2009)

This is awesome! DirecTV in there, and get a load of the TVs and cell phones. Funny how prices haven't changed that much really other than computers.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

This site is great as well, Radio Shack catalogs:

General Catalogs starting in 1939
http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalog_directory.html

Computer Catalogs:
http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/computer.html
Back in 1987, a 1.2 meg 5.25" floppy drive was $300. A Double density 3.5" drive was $200. Forget the $800 20 meg hard drive


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## ncxcstud (Apr 22, 2007)

Love the 1.6GB hard drives for $239.99 

Amazing to think that we have 1TB drives for way less than that now...


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## hilmar2k (Mar 18, 2007)

16MB memory for $129. Good times....


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## RMBittner (Mar 28, 2011)

ncxcstud said:


> Love the 1.6GB hard drives for $239.99
> 
> Amazing to think that we have 1TB drives for way less than that now...


Ha. I paid $300 for my first add-on hard drive: 30MB. (Yes, that was $10 per megabyte.)

It went into my very first computer: a Tandy 1000 (from Radio Shack), which shipped with only a single 5.25-inch floppy drive. And 64K of RAM. If I remember correctly, it cost something like $1,800, circa 1985/6.

Bob


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

I remember paying $400 for a 40MB drive myself, and $100/MB for RAM.


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## hilmar2k (Mar 18, 2007)

RMBittner said:


> Ha. I paid $300 for my first add-on hard drive: 30MB. (Yes, that was $10 per megabyte.)
> 
> It went into my very first computer: a Tandy 1000 (from Radio Shack), which shipped with only a single 5.25-inch floppy drive. And 64K of RAM. If I remember correctly, it cost something like $1,800, circa 1985/6.
> 
> Bob


Many a fine memory I have playing Leisure Suit Larry on my Tandy 1000....


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

My first system was a 1000SX. 384k of memory, two DD 5.25" drives. Over time I upgraded with some spare parts my uncle had, bumped it to 640k memory, added a 3.5" floppy drive and I believe a real time clock (Smartwatch.)

Kids these days just don't get the same experience of changing their autoexec.bat and config.sys files to free up enough k of memory to get their games to run, or the joys of changing IRQ and DMA assignments. Doh! Need 20kb more memory!


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

dpeters11 said:


> Kids these days just don't get the same experience of changing their autoexec.bat and config.sys files to free up enough k of memory to get their games to run, or the joys of changing IRQ and DMA assignments. Doh! Need 20kb more memory!


Be glad you didn't have to mess with extended and expanded memory and trying to figure out which memory manager to use.


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## sigma1914 (Sep 5, 2006)

hilmar2k said:


> Many a fine memory I have playing Leisure Suit Larry on my Tandy 1000....


:lol: We'd play that at my friends house while his parents were at work so we wouldn't get caught.


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## Chris Blount (Jun 22, 2001)

Can't believe the prices especially for the computers and printers. 

This was also 1 year before DVD so seeing VHS is kind of weird as well.


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## hilmar2k (Mar 18, 2007)

Chris Blount said:


> Can't believe the prices especially for the computers and printers.
> 
> *This was also 1 year before DVD* so seeing VHS is kind of weird as well.


No it's not.

EDIT: Sorry, brain cramp. Read that and completely thought CD.


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## maartena (Nov 1, 2010)

I bought a CD burner in 1996, I paid about $599 for it at the time (in Europe), and it could burn at a whopping 2x speed.... so it would take 30-35 minutes for 1 CD to complete, and you really could not use your PC for much else as you would get a buffer underrun, and your CD was only good as a coaster.

And CD's at the time were like $39.95 for 10 or so.... so like $4 or $5 a piece. 

Still, I was the envy of everyone I knew, because no one had a CD burner for the next 2 years to come or so, and then they started to become a bit more affordable.

This was in the days that so called "warez CD's" were the rage. People would have a CD-ROM drive, and games were still small, that is, 10, 15, sometimes up to 30 or 40 Mb in size. Warez groups would distribute a "warez CD" which contained a large amount of common games and software tools released that month, and they would come up with another one the next month.

I had a contact back then that sold them for $15 or so, so I bought one every month.... which in turn I re-sold copies off to all my friends for $10, covering the cost of the $5 cd's, and making back the money I spent on the warez CD's, since I usually had about 4 or 5 friends buying, I made about $10 a month + all the free software a man could ever need.

Yup it was wrong.... but that's what people did. A lot. Just like dubbing tapes in the 80ies. 

1996.... seems so far away now. I was indeed running Windows 95 back then, on a very powerful 166 Mhz MMX computer with a whopping 32 Mb of RAM, I had LOADED it up with memory to the max. I worked at a computer store back then and could buy at whole sale prices, and the buyer always let me know when he got a good deal from Taiwan or somewhere, (which depended on the dollar exchange rate mostly).


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## RMBittner (Mar 28, 2011)

Chris Blount said:


> Can't believe the prices especially for the computers and printers.
> 
> This was also 1 year before DVD so seeing VHS is kind of weird as well.


I can't get over how the prices have fallen -- while the technology has dramatically improved -- over the years.

Back in the early 80s, I was recording tons of movies from cable...onto VHS, of course! A box of 10 blank VHS tapes would set me back $60-70. The very first VHS movie I ever bought, "Miracle on 34th Street," cost $59.95, circa 1983.

Bob


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## Cholly (Mar 22, 2004)

I bought a Fisher VCR around 1983 for over $400 from a local video rental store. The VCR outlasted the rental store by many years.


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## Chris Blount (Jun 22, 2001)

Cholly said:


> I bought a Fisher VCR around 1983 for over $400 from a local video rental store. The VCR outlasted the rental store by many years.


Me too. I think I paid something like $400 for a VCR in 1983. Two years later I bought my first VHS Hi-Fi VCR for someting like $550 at Target. I think it was a Panasonic. It only lasted for about 4 years.


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## braven (Apr 9, 2007)

hilmar2k said:


> Many a fine memory I have playing Leisure Suit Larry on my Tandy 1000....


The Tandy 1000 TL/2 was my first home PC, it had a huge 20 MB HD. I loved the Leisure Suit Larry series!

That sales flyer is crazy. Talk about a blast from the past! Anyone else remember when RAM cost $50 a MB? My ACAD setup had a whopping 4 MB of RAM and I thought it was amazing.

Thanks for sharing that.


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## braven (Apr 9, 2007)

Stuart Sweet said:


> I remember paying $400 for a 40MB drive myself, and $100/MB for RAM.


Damn, I remember RAM costing $50/MB. I thought that was crazy!


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## Davenlr (Sep 16, 2006)

First VHS VCR - $1200
First 100MB hard drive - $1100
Special controller card to squeeze an extra few MB from above drive - $200
Computer - PC XT clone - $800
First modem - 300 baud...connected to a UniVax computer at the local University to join a chat room program they ran. 20 users max, and it was always full. And at 300 baud, you could actually read all the replys, unlike twitter where the replies fly off the screen before you can even possibly read them.

Wow I cannot believe I paid that kind of money for computing. Still remember using a service to use an early implementation of the internet to port to a bank of modems in a distant state, and allow dialing out to connect to that towns local bulletin boards.


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