Cost of a 128KB computer with floppies in 1985

TrivialBetaState@sopuli.xyz to Technology@lemmy.world – 572 points –

How much would you pay for a PC with 128KB RAM, and no hard disk?

In today's money (inflation adjusted)

This an ad from Personal Computer World (UK) from 1985

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Around 1983 I got a Morrow Microdecision with two floppies.

No hard drive or mouse. It did come with COBOL.

It failed after 23 lines of text entry. Turned out the CPU was defective.

People kept asking me, "Dude, what do you need a computer for?"

Serious question: What did you use that computer for? So, did you just learn to write cobol and make your own programs?

I don’t know about the OP, but our first computer was a TRS-80 clone with a tape drive, 16k ram, and stunning 64x16 B&W graphics. Every month dad would drive us to computer club, we’d copy as many games as we could (onto tape), then spend the rest of the month trying to get them to work. Rinse and repeat. It was awesome.

Also typed in basic games from the computer mags which needed lots of debugging. How I learnt to program (before being taught Pascal in high school).

Typing in the games could be both fun and highly frustrating. I had an Apple II and if you fucked up on a line, you probably weren't going to be able to find it and fix it. There was no debugger and typing LIST would show you the whole thing and you couldn't scroll up. So if you did it right, it was great. If you messed up somewhere, good luck.

I don't remember much on the apple, but in commodore basic you could do LIST 50-80 for example, I'm willing to bet the apple could too...

I do have a funny story about the place I got it in San Francisco, of you care to hear it.

I just used it for writing papers in college.

I had no idea how to use COBOL.