this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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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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[–] zerbey 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

This is why the ZX Spectrum was so important, in 1982 it cost £125 for the 16K model (£469 or so now). That's within the reach of many consumers. Sure, it was laughably simplistic even at launch, but if it wasn't for the Speccy I wouldn't be an IT professional today.

[–] Oneobi 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My Dragon 32 or 64 (can't remember which it was) has a lot to answer for too!

[–] zerbey 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Whole bunch of low cost 8-bit machines in that era, the Dragon 32, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC ranges to name but a few. Of course we must also mention the BBC Micro, was not low cost but every school had one if you grew up in the UK.

[–] khannie 1 points 1 year ago

We had one in my school in Ireland too (and I think they were common in schools here) but tbh none of the teachers knew how to use it and so we got very little time on it in school.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hey ZX-81 gang here!

999SKR (Swedish crowns) guess it was like 100$ and it gave you a 1KB 1Mhz computer :-) around 400SKR more for an expansion card with a whopping 16KB...

Went the C64 way but damn that Spectrum was sexy back in the day.

[–] Magister 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

ZX81 here too! Bought 500FF in 1981 iirc, in kit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Clavier membrane team !

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

BTW did you solder it yourself?

[–] Magister 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My father did, I was 10. But he then teached me a lot of things like soldering, programming in basic and Z80 assembly

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

So true! My parents got me the C64 when I had no idea about computers. I loved the Spectrum+ my buddy had at the time but always wanted the C128 another friend of mine got. My parents eventually upgraded my computer to an Amstrad CPC6128 when they saw that I was actually programming in BASIC. I learned a lot from that computer too, e.g. Fortran, Pascal, a bit of Z80 assemly (the last one was horrible!)