Cleaning up can be a sobering experience (1 Viewer)

[Patrick Sun]

I got the urge to clean up a bunch of drawers yesterday, and I happened upon many of my receipts for PC parts.

I was shocked to find a receipt for a 6.4GB hard drive that I bought in 1997 for a whopping $305 plus tax! I about fell over when I saw the price.

I do remember paying $300 for a 540MB hard drive in the early 1990's.

I found another receipt from 1998 (I think) for a 13.6GB hard drive, and it was around $290.

Another receipt showed me paying over $220 for a 2x4x CDRW drive in 1999.

I found a receipt for a Celeron 300A/256MB RAM combo package for over $400 (this was back when overclocking the Celeron 300A to 450MHz was a fun pasttime).

Then I found another receipt that showed me my current motherboard is over 3 years old...Time to upgrade!

Just last week I bought a 100GB hard drive with 8MB cache for $75 after mail-in rebates. Amazing how PC prices change so dramatically over time.

 

[Chuck C]

My Pentium III 733Mhz w/ 20-Gig, 8x DVD, CD-RW (replaced with a much faster one in '02), 17" monitor, Zip, 128mb Ram, altec Lansing 2.1 System, and cheap Epson printer cost $2,500 in late 2000. I'd kill to have that money back!

 

[John_Bonner]

I hear ya Pat.

I recently came across a receipt for a PC and monitor I bought in January 1997.

The PC: Compaq Presario 200Mhz (MMX!), 32MB RAM, 3.0GB HDD, integrated sound and video. Price $2,399

The monitor: Hitachi 17". Price: $679

At the time that PC was the "latest & greatest", the MMX chip had just come out.

Funny thing is I still use both. The monitor I use with my newest home-built machine (still works great!). The PC is in my 3 1/2 yr old's room connected to a Wireless Linksys Router. For what he uses it for (Nickjr, Bob the Builder, Sesame Street, etc..) it's fine.

 

[Todd Hochard]

Moore's Law at work.

I remember buying a hard drive for $1/MB in early 1994. I bought 4MB RAM for $160 at that time, as well.

My current setup is over 3 years old, and it's sticking around until it dies, or becomes completely useless. As I'm not a gamer, that might take a while.

 

[Charles J P]

My very first PC I bought in the fall of '96. A Pentium (non-mmx) 133mhz, 32MB ram, 1gb hard drive, Altec lansing "premium speakers" and upgraded sound card, and a shitty epson printer.... $3300. My current PC is hard to price out since I just upgraded, but kept my hard drive, I spend spent under $300 for a case, mobo with onboard sound, video and NIC, amd 1600+ Athlon XP processor, 1GB ram.
Pretty sick what $3300 would get you. Probably dual processor over 2.5GHz each, most expensive graphics and sound cards out there, neon and plexy case (if you wanted) flat panel monitor, DVD burner, etc.

 

[KyleS]

I am with you there Pat. I used to sell computers when I was in College at Circuit City and the first computer that I bought while I worked there was an NEC PowerPlayer 2020.

200mhz Pentium (NON MMX) but top of the line at the time.
32MB RAM
4GIG HD
2MB 2-D Video Card with a Dedicated 4MB Monster 3-D Accelerator (Top end baby...WAY Back then)
Top Gun Flight Stick
Advent speakers and Sub
Gravis Game Port with 2 gamepads

$2500 and that was at my Cost DAMN, Ouch, Uhhgggggg
and then I bought a top of the line NEC M700 17" .25dp monitor which ran me another $750 at cost.

So total that system set me back around $3250 and I didnt even get a scanner, printer, or Microsoft office DOH!

I think my parents paid around 4-5K for the Apple IIGS they bought my brother and I when we were really young but that was with a Color Ribbon printer and 13"? color mornitor.

KyleS

 

[Paul E. Fox II]

Yep...I bought a used P200MMX with a 4 gig HD and a whopping 64mb of RAM for 1800.00 from a friend. The computer was less that 3 months old and she sold it to me at the remainder of her cost at the time...all because she caught her husband downloading the porn!

I was giddy! I had a cool PC! Two months later, the PII 300s were hitting the street and I suddenly felt like I had a Commodore 64!

Until Christmas, it was still serving duty for the kids!

 

[Jeff Lehr]

Speaking of Commodore 64's...I remember buying an external hard drive for my Amiga 500 back in 1989. $600 for 20 MEGAbytes. Hard to believe what I was thinking back then...

JL

 

[JasenP]

I learned long ago never to look back when it came to PC hardware prices, it hurts too much.

Fast Forward to May 9, 2005:

"$50 for a Terabyte drive, that's outrageous!"
-JasenP (from the future)

 

[Patrick Sun]

Oh dear, I just remembered paying $40/MB of RAM 12 years ago. Then again Bill Gates thought we'd only need 640kb in the early days of the PC.

 

[Ted Lee]

hmm...

i don't even wanna think about how much my first pc (a fully loaded mac+ ) cost me.

i think i bought it sometime around 87 or 88.

iirc, the external hd alone (i think it was 10 or 15g) cost me almost 800 bucks.

good gawd...what was i thinking.

 

[Steven K]

My first PC (that I got when I was a freshman in high-school) back in 9293:

486DX33 MHz
4 MB RAM
260 MB Hard Drive
5.25' Floppy
3.5 Floppy Drive
Epson 24 Pin Dot Matrix printer
2400 bps modem
15 inch interlaced CRT monitor

Total Price tag: ~$3500

I was the envy of every kid on the block. Not only was I the only one with a math co-processor (not that it benefitted any of the apps that I ran) but I also had a huge HD!

A few weeks later, my dad went out and, for the low price of $599, bought a Creative Labs CD-ROMSound Card kit (single speed CD-ROM).

I spent hours, and hours, and hours, and... playing Wolfenstein 3D and Doom (over the modem). But, the best thing about the pre-internet computing era, was the existence of Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs). In Jackson, TN, we had several BBSs. I met many of my current day friends on the BBSs (and a few of them are members here on the HTF )

As to what happened to that system, I eventually broke the system apart and made use of the internals. One of the RAM chips is now my keychain, and the motherboard is hanging on my wall.