Geek Spending

Siji · Post by **Siji** » May 12, 2003, 2:59 pm

Going through some old receipts that I'd kept for who knows what purpose, I noticed some old computer items I'd bought. Noticing the price then and knowing the price now.. bleh.

$900 for a HP 2x cd burner.. blank cd's were around $10 each. $1000 for a HP 3c flatbed scanner.. Then there's the $500 I spent for a *used* C= Lt. Kernal for a C= 64 BBS I ran. (Lt. Kernals were a box about 1 1/2 feet square that contained a 20 megabyte Seagate MFM hard drive) Nevermind the prices we paid for 2400 baud modems in a time when 300 baud was still nice.

What geeky things can you remember paying painful prices for? (Other than hookers and alcohol)

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » May 12, 2003, 3:03 pm

$500.00 for a 20MB Hard Drive

Post by **Xouqoa** » May 12, 2003, 3:05 pm

300bps modem cost like $499 in 1984 =)

Ebumar · Post by **Ebumar** » May 12, 2003, 3:07 pm

I remember my dad buying a 386 for some ungodly amount of money. I was too young at the time...

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » May 12, 2003, 3:11 pm

~$900 for a 9 pin Okidata dot matrix (in nearly continuous service since 1982).

~$5000 for 64Mb Sun memory...

Mort · Post by **Mort** » May 12, 2003, 4:13 pm

Teh Win!

Melrin_Specclaster · Post by **Melrin_Specclaster** » May 12, 2003, 4:50 pm

My first 8086 was roughly 2000.
My first 14400 modem was 500 (that was half price, retail was 1000).
Then theres the C64 floppy drive that cost 250$.

Pilsburry · Post by **Pilsburry** » May 12, 2003, 5:22 pm

I woned a Ti99-4A, Apple 2+, 300baud modem.....I owned a lot of stuff that is crap today.

I generally don't by the top of the line stuff....I let other people pay 5x the cost for 5% higher preformance....then in 6mo-1yr I by the same thing...but I pay way less.

If your careful what you load on your machine and buy the right mix of components.....you barely notice your going 5% slower.

Hoarmurath · Post by **Hoarmurath** » May 12, 2003, 6:25 pm

I remember paying $7.95 per hour for Internet access. (This was when the WWW was relatively new to non-military/university types and most people used BBSes/CompuServe/etc.)

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » May 12, 2003, 7:16 pm

Mort wrote:Teh Win!

Amen! I had that and the Dataset. My two favorite games (in cartridges) were Omega Race and Radar Rat Race.

Lor · Post by **Lor** » May 13, 2003, 9:12 am

Back when I had my 486DX2-66 I upgraded my 4... yes 4 megs of RAM to a Blistering 8 megs, it was 50 bucks a meg back then... friends actually ohh and ahhh'd when I told them about the upgrade.

vn_Tanc · Post by **vn_Tanc** » May 13, 2003, 9:39 am

Ah yes the heady mid-90s days when RAM SIMMS were more valuable than diamonds, weight for weight. Man they sucked

The place I was working at for the summer (was doing my degree at the time) got robbed of it's PCs twice in 6 weeks and they were all UBER POWERFUL P90s!!! with assloads of RAM (some even had 64 YES SIXTY-FOUR Mb).
The rozzers eventually caught up with the guys and found his home so stuffed with hot PC ger he could hardly move.

masteen · Post by **masteen** » May 13, 2003, 9:47 am

I shelled out about $200 bucks to upgrade my Apple II GS from 512K to 1MB. The chips came in a tubular sleeve, stuck in foam. I had to bend the pins, and manually insert them into the daughter card, then stick that back in the mobo.

I was fucking UBER with one meg!

Ceredwin · Post by **Ceredwin** » May 13, 2003, 2:39 pm

The first computer I bought for myself was a 486, cost $2100, and was the only time I ever bought "high-end" (66 mghz, can't recall how much ram, but had an 8 meg on-board video card, uber) I dont know what my mother paid for our commodore 64, but she sprung for a good printer and extra disk drive, was probably pretty costly for those days.

Anyone else have comps collecting dust in the attic they can't seem to throw out? (486, K6 400, HP 500 so far)

Cartalas · Post by **Cartalas** » May 13, 2003, 2:45 pm

How about the thousand dollar phone bills when I was with -=INC=- placing software on BBS's.

Siji · Post by **Siji** » May 13, 2003, 7:56 pm

I dread to think of what type of phone bills we used to cause my previous place of employment when we were in FLT (Fairlight) back when.. Had 4 outside lines setup to give tone when we dialed in. Was rather nice.

I don't even want to think of the bills *I* actually had to pay when I was in my C= bbs days downloading Color 64 BBS mods from around the country. Eep.

Jarori Bloodletter · Post by **Jarori Bloodletter** » May 14, 2003, 3:51 am

1495.00 for a 486/33 from Montgomery wards was the first Uber machine i got w/14inch Mon.. had a 14.4 modem and dailup was like 39.95 month..
It had 4 megs ram 2x CDROM <i did get a Quad> later and 4 more megs ram for 150 bux

I did however own a commadore 64 w/ external HD and a 12inch b/w T.V. for a mon.. It also had a 300 baud modem. my friend had a color *gasp* screen for his, I thought he was UBer..

Kguku · Post by **Kguku** » May 14, 2003, 4:11 am

vn_Tanc wrote:Ah yes the heady mid-90s days when RAM SIMMS were more valuable than diamonds, weight for weight. Man they sucked

The place I was working at for the summer (was doing my degree at the time) got robbed of it's PCs twice in 6 weeks and they were all UBER POWERFUL P90s!!! with assloads of RAM (some even had 64 YES SIXTY-FOUR Mb).
The rozzers eventually caught up with the guys and found his home so stuffed with hot PC ger he could hardly move.

Yeah it worked out to roughly $100+ / meg you purchased of ram. 16megs of ram cost me like $1600, it was insanely stupid. But I had 20 megs of ram back then, so I was godly!

I remember the first PC Clone I ever owned - Commodore PC 20-II

20 MB Hard-drive
9.54MHz CPU in Turbo mode (Could reduce speed to 4.77MHz if you had compatibility problems)
5 1/4" Floppy
CGA onboard video
1200bps modem
12" Bell Monitor

I loved it!

masteen · Post by **masteen** » May 14, 2003, 6:19 pm

Dual 5 1/4" floppy setup is so vary leet!

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » May 14, 2003, 6:25 pm

masteen wrote:Dual 5 1/4" floppy setup is so vary leet!

Only if they're double sided!

masteen · Post by **masteen** » May 14, 2003, 6:37 pm

LOL! I'd forgotten about that. We used to have to flip the disks over and shit...

Forthe · Post by **Forthe** » May 14, 2003, 7:10 pm

masteen wrote:Dual 5 1/4" floppy setup is so vary leet!

That was my first PC. Dual 360k CGA 8088 with no HD. There was much joy when we upgraded it with a 20MB harddrive and could play king's quest without having to swap floppies.

Any Sierra boxing fans out there?