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1989 Receipt For 30 MB Hard Drive


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Just for fun, I was going through my old computer files from the 80s and 90s, as well as my old website files, as I am moving to another website host.

I found this startling receipt for a hard drive I bought in 1989. It was only 30 MB. I erased the personal info so I could post it here for fun.

 

TkqWpSUl.jpg

 

If any of you have old reminders of what we went through to get to here feel free!

 

RV/Derek
http://www.rvroadie.com Email on the bottom of my website page.
Retired AF 1971-1998


When you see a worthy man, endeavor to emulate him. When you see an unworthy man, look inside yourself. - Confucius

 

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” ... Voltaire

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Now that made me grin....I remember buying a 20 meg drive, for something like $500 or so back in the late 80's...

Several years ago I was going thru some of my old vacuum tubes and ran across a Realistic Gold Clad Lifetime Tube still in the box with the receipt...from 1970, when Radio Shack still used hand-written receipts.

As a friendly prank, I took the tube and the box and the receipt to the local Radio Shack and walked in and showed the young manager chick the receipt, and I said, this one is bad, I want a new one...its guaranteed for life! She said what is that? I explained what it was...she was amazed...and took pictures to text around to her Radio Shack associates, I presume.

For some reason they just dont keep them on the shelves anymore....

 

 

 

Edited by podwerkz

Nothing to see here. 

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7 hours ago, podwerkz said:

Now that made me grin....I remember buying a 20 meg drive, for something like $500 or so back in the late 80's...

Several years ago I was going thru some of my old vacuum tubes and ran across a Realistic Gold Clad Lifetime Tube still in the box with the receipt...from 1970, when Radio Shack still used hand-written receipts.

As a friendly prank, I took the tube and the box and the receipt to the local Radio Shack and walked in and showed the young manager chick the receipt, and I said, this one is bad, I want a new one...its guaranteed for life! She said what is that? I explained what it was...she was amazed...and took pictures to text around to her Radio Shack associates, I presume.

For some reason they just dont keep them on the shelves anymore....

 

 

 

Where the heck did you find a Radio Shack.  I think they must be rarer than the tube.

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Years ago we had a bunch of them! My second paragraph above starts out 'Several years ago'. (that established the time travel component of the post!) 🚀

I miss that store, but in the last couple of decades they lost their way with nothing but toys, then cellphones, then crap. The serious hobbyist got left twisting in the wind.

They just did not want our money anymore.

But oh, the glory days of waiting for that monthly Radio Shack flyer to arrive in the mail with some nifty coupons and all kinds of electronic gadgetry on sale...

 

 

Edited by podwerkz

Nothing to see here. 

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In 1986 I purchased an Amiga 1000 computer that came with only a single 3.5 inch floppy.   One of the things I used it for was COBOL software development using a IBM PC emulator.  Needless to say, it left much to be desired in the performance department.  I wanted to add a hard drive but they were so expensive that I decided it would be smarter to just buy a PC clone.  I ended up with a 10 MHz 80286 CPU, 1 MB RAM, and a 40 MB hard drive for less that the price of a hard drive for the Amiga.

That 286 computer is long gone but I still have the Amiga. 😀

Safe Travels (or not)...

Roger, K4RS and Toni, K1TS
Amateur Radio Operators - Motorcycle Riders (Harley Davidson Tri-Glide Ultra)

Fulltime from 2003-2016 - Now longtime RVers

On the road, living the dream...
Ford F-250 Super Duty 7.3 liter diesel and Forest River XLR Toyhauler. 

Position report via amateur radio

 

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I can remember upgrading in 1988 a IBM 8088 that my wife's company upgraded from and gave to her which came with two 5.25 inch floppies.  I removed 1 of the 5.25 floppies and replaced it with a half height 3.5 in floppy and a half height 10 Mg hard drive thinking I would never fill that baby up.  Man was I wrong.  I also installed a 2400 baud Modem thinking I was in the tall cotton then.  I may have upgrade from 128mg to 512mg of Ram but I don't remember for sure.

Dennis

USA Master Sergeant Ret.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/1/2020 at 2:37 PM, podwerkz said:

Now that made me grin....I remember buying a 20 meg drive, for something like $500 or so back in the late 80's...

 

I was working for the Forest Service in 1987 or so.  We were using a linear programming model to calculate timber harvest levels during the Forest Planning process.  ONE computer run was costing us $1,000 and that was using the Federal computers in Kansas City!!  It took a overnight run to do ONE run.  We were doing lots of runs, probably the total numbered in the hundreds before the model was finally retired.

At that time, Compaq came out with the 486/33 desktop and another company came out with  linear programming program that used a dongle. 

So it really was a fairly simple decision to buy the Compaq machine.

About 20 years later, the Forest Service was doing an inventory of ALL its functioning computers.   The accounting department called me and said that their information showed that I paid 17,000 dollars for the Compaq 486/33 and they assumed that figure was incorrect and wanted to know what I paid for it.

The taxpayers paid $17,000 for it.  They got their money's worth out of the machine. 

It was still functioning 20 years later.  But is was no longer "cutting" edge technology.  Over the years, it kept moving "down" in what it was expected to do.  At the end  it was hooked up to a Nikon film and slide scanner and was "slowly" converting  the historical Forest Service slides and film to digital files. 

It didn't make the 30 years to retirement.  I think the Forest Service finally gave it a early-out retirement" after 25 years. 

They don't build computers like that anymore.

 

Vladimr Steblina

Retired Forester...exploring the public lands.

usbackroads.blogspot.com

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I realize the enterprise and consumer markets are much different.  But, IMO, including a view of the earlier enterprise market development makes the amazing consumer disk drive progression even more amazing

My first full-time job was as a "systems engineer".  A fancy name for someone who actually knows something about the products, the company I worked for, was selling.  I remember working with a potential customer to create a benchmark test comparing the disk drives my company was selling with that of a competitor.  These disk drives had 24" platters, a transfer rate of almost 1MB per second, and a capacity of up to 70 MB.  Our drives smoked the competitor's drives.  I don't remember how much our disk drives cost, but they were many tens of thousands 1976 dollars.

Volvo 770, New Horizons Majestic and an upcoming Smart car

 

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In '88 I went back to grad school as what they call a "non-traditional student." Thinking that my Tandy 1000 with a 10 MB "hard card" might not be up to the task, I went to a local clone shop not too far from the house (they dealt mostly with point-of-sale and business systems) to have a mini-tower built to my specifications. I knew I wanted one of the new 10 MHz motherboards with 1 MB of RAM (surface-mounted, of course). I had just started playing with one of the little hand-held half-page dithering scanners and, when asked what size hard drive I wanted, I said, "40 MB." The response was, "Good Lord! What are you going to do with all that space?" I don't remember exactly what all this cost at the time, but I do remember my late wife thinking it was too much to spend on a computer.

A few months later my parents came to visit. Dad had worked on the command module for the Apollo project. When he saw my new computer, he asked, "What's that." I told him - along with all the specs. His response: "Hmmm... I think there was only 32K of memory in the command module."

Now I have more computing power and storage space than any of that - by orders of magnitude - in the phone holster on my belt... though the phone holster really dates me and our kids tease me about it.

Rob 

2012 F350 CC LB DRW 6.7
2020 Solitude 310GK-R, MORryde IS, disc brakes, solar, DP windows
Full-time since 8/2015

 

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My phone is way more powerful than the $5 Million Cray supercomputer I used to work on.  Now where is the FORTRAN compiler so I can relive my past?

Edited by Bill Joyce

2004 40' Newmar Dutch Star DP towing an AWD 2020 Ford Escape Hybrid, Fulltimer July 2003 to October 2018, Parttimer now.
Travels through much of 2013 - http://www.sacnoth.com - Bill, Diane and Evita (the cat)
 

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Back in the late 80's I can remember purchasing a 128K SSD (solid state disk)... and placing our VSAM File Indices on that much faster disk device.   Greatly improved our CICS (On-Line System) response time.   Cost was in the $100k - $200k range, iirc. 

Edited by Jim & Alice

2007 Dolphin

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