Prices back then.

[0078265317]

It's amazing What things used to cost back then.

 

40 Vintage Computer Advertisements of Yesteryears - Hongkiat

 

 

Only rich people could afford 20 thousand dollars.  Even if that link is correct 10mb was only 3398.  Hard to believe it was that much back then.  But I remember it being high back then.  Not sure what year these were however.

 

But now even 256gb is on sale for 20 bucks.

 

PNY Elite Turbo Attache 4 256GB USB 3.2 Flash Drive Gray P-FD256TBAT4A-GE - Best Buy

Hard to believe the parts to make all that stuff was so much back then.  And it somehow is cheaper now.  Maybe because all the ssd's are all plastic.  But that still does not explain how it was 20 thousand for a 300 megabyte hard drive back then and a 4tb is only 73 dollars now.

 

WD Blue 4TB Internal SATA Hard Drive for Desktops WDBH2D0040HNC-NRSN - Best Buy

 

Back then it would of been like the mortgage on a house.

[Krebizfan]

A business today could buy an array of storage that could easily exceed the million dollar mark which would be more than those disk platters cost, even factoring the effects of inflation. $20K for 330 MB means about 17KB per dollar or about what the cost of storage on a single sided single density 5.25" floppy disk was. The 5.25" disk by itself was $5 to store about 90kB; that excludes the $500 for the drive and the $300 for the controller. For bulk storage, those disk packs were astonishingly cheap. Now, if one wanted expensive storage in the mid-70s, National Semiconductor planned to use ram cartridges to store the data for one of their programmable calculators. The planned pricing would have been $20 for about 250 bytes or more than 1000 times the cost per byte of disk platters. 

 

One major difference in storage was that storage back then was intended to be used 24x7 for many years. I remember a test on flash drives being repeatedly written to and then reformatted resulting in drives that failed in only a few days. Even the really good flash memory could only handle a few months of writes at the chips full data rate. If one wants to get reliability today, one has to extensively over provision to make up for the short lives of the storage. 

Edited September 1, 2023 by Krebizfan

[mr_me]

I'm guessing they're from the early 1980s, when personal computers didn't come with hard disk drives.  The oem pricing is for quantities of more than forty, and includes the controller.

[0078265317]

13 hours ago, Krebizfan said:

A business today could buy an array of storage that could easily exceed the million dollar mark which would be more than those disk platters cost, even factoring the effects of inflation. $20K for 330 MB means about 17KB per dollar or about what the cost of storage on a single sided single density 5.25" floppy disk was. The 5.25" disk by itself was $5 to store about 90kB; that excludes the $500 for the drive and the $300 for the controller. For bulk storage, those disk packs were astonishingly cheap. Now, if one wanted expensive storage in the mid-70s, National Semiconductor planned to use ram cartridges to store the data for one of their programmable calculators. The planned pricing would have been $20 for about 250 bytes or more than 1000 times the cost per byte of disk platters. 

 

One major difference in storage was that storage back then was intended to be used 24x7 for many years. I remember a test on flash drives being repeatedly written to and then reformatted resulting in drives that failed in only a few days. Even the really good flash memory could only handle a few months of writes at the chips full data rate. If one wants to get reliability today, one has to extensively over provision to make up for the short lives of the storage. 

Interesting thought.

[+OLD CS1]

Here I am, about to spend $329 each for four 18TB drives for my NAS... my current array of 10TB drives is full.  I am hoping for a good coupon to come my way beforehand.

[0078265317]

21 minutes ago, OLD CS1 said:

Here I am, about to spend $329 each for four 18TB drives for my NAS... my current array of 10TB drives is full.  I am hoping for a good coupon to come my way beforehand.

18tb is 18,000gb.  225 x 80mb is 18,000gb.  12,000 dollars / 329 = 

36.4741641337

 

So that is a lot of difference.  So it was 36 x more expensive back then.  And 225 x 20,000.  So 18tb worth of files would of costed 4,500,000 dollars back then.

 

123

 

Edited September 1, 2023 by 0078265317

[0078265317]

399 is a little better.

 

[zzip]

On 8/31/2023 at 11:24 PM, 0078265317 said:

Only rich people could afford 20 thousand dollars.  Even if that link is correct 10mb was only 3398.  Hard to believe it was that much back then.  But I remember it being high back then.  Not sure what year these were however.

 

I don't think those ads were targeted at rich people, looks like it was for companies and other organizations with minicomputers.    The prices of such things have always been much higher than consumer prices, because you're paying for (perceived) reliability and possibly premium support.

 

In the 80s I recall hard disks for home users being expensive, but in the hundreds of dollars for tiny capacity, not 10's of thousands of dollars.

[Tanooki]

I remember someone bringing up how much the grandparents put into a first computer for the hours Christmas 1990.  It was a Headstart 500CD model system, a 386sx16, 2MB of ram, 80MB drive, 3 1/2 floppy, the first CD(tray based) ROM drive that ran at like 1/2 a single speed, sound blaster pro, a vga/svga card that could top out 1024x768 in windows 3.  It had a 15" CRT, a dot matrix printer, generic matching speakers, mouse, keyboard, everything you'd need, and 50lbs of very thick books and like 6 CDs outside of the usual install stuff.  I'm pretty sure they said it was about/was $4000, something crazy, and did it ever get used, well used, even in death replaced with a 486 anything I could harvest was slaved/reused (hdd, sound card) worth saving at least.

[+OLD CS1]

In 1977, the Atari Video Computer System (the 2600) was released for $189.95, or $959 in 2023 money.  The Atari 2600+ will be released in November of this year at $129.99, or $26 in 1977 money.

 

This is an amazing feat IMO.  Not only has the technology vastly improved since 1977, but the cost of the technology in equivalent value has drastically dropped.  In 1997, you might pay $959 2023-dollars for a video game system, but it would have been at the center of your entertainment stack -- in fact, likely the only piece in your video entertainment (next to the TV, of course,) unless you had at least $1,000 (1977) to plonk down on a VCR of the era.

 

Compare that with prices for systems like the PlayStation 5 around $499.  That is hundreds of times the technological power and utility for roughly half the price.

 

Just some thoughts.

[mr_me]

4 hours ago, zzip said:

I don't think those ads were targeted at rich people, looks like it was for companies and other organizations with minicomputers.    The prices of such things have always been much higher than consumer prices, because you're paying for (perceived) reliability and possibly premium support.

 

In the 80s I recall hard disks for home users being expensive, but in the hundreds of dollars for tiny capacity, not 10's of thousands of dollars.

With the volume pricing, the ad is probably intended for resellers and system integrators.

 

Hundreds of dollars for a small hard disk was the late 1980s, early 80s was much more expensive.

 

3 hours ago, Tanooki said:

I remember someone bringing up how much the grandparents put into a first computer for the hours Christmas 1990.  It was a Headstart 500CD model system, a 386sx16, 2MB of ram, 80MB drive, 3 1/2 floppy, the first CD(tray based) ROM drive that ran at like 1/2 a single speed, sound blaster pro, a vga/svga card that could top out 1024x768 in windows 3.  It had a 15" CRT, a dot matrix printer, generic matching speakers, mouse, keyboard, everything you'd need, and 50lbs of very thick books and like 6 CDs outside of the usual install stuff.  I'm pretty sure they said it was about/was $4000, something crazy, and did it ever get used, well used, even in death replaced with a 486 anything I could harvest was slaved/reused (hdd, sound card) worth saving at least.

In 1990, VGA graphics alone could have nearly doubled the price of a computer.  Companies were still buying XT class PCs with hercules graphics.  A 1.44MB floppy drive was still a luxury, so the brand new CD-ROM drive technology must have added hundreds of dollars.

[Tanooki]

1 minute ago, mr_me said:

With the volume pricing, the ad is probably intended for resellers and system integrators.

 

Hundreds of dollars for a small hard disk was the late 1980s, early 80s was much more expensive.

 

In 1990, VGA graphics alone could have nearly doubled the price of a computer.  Companies were still buying XT class PCs with hercules graphics.  A 1.44MB floppy drive was still a luxury, so the brand new CD-ROM drive technology must have added hundreds of dollars.

Definitely I knew they weren't exaggerating.  Back then they were close to or about ready to retire and close down a plastics company they owned so they while not millionaires were sitting on a tidy sum in their over 55 condo community so it was a drop in the bucket that was out of the reach of many.  At that rate a 286 still was fairly common as was EGA, adlib or pc-beep, 5 1/4" floppies and no mass (optical) storage of any type.  It took me ages but I found the copy of the epic Game CD that kept me busy for a couple years more or less, some of it aged better than others now but works in DOS Box thankfully, and the old Manhole CD is a cheapie up on GoG etc and it's a fun little trip still to chill with for like 30min now and again.

[Razzie.P]

I was watching the videos on "The Making of Karateka" and someone was talking about the C64 and mentioned something like "...by then, everyone was getting the C64 because they were about a hundred bucks."   Was that ever the case, or they exaggerating/misremembering a bit?  I don't ever remember seeing a computer for a hundred bucks as a kid.  I woulda been hustlin' like a mofo to scrap up the cash to get one if that was the case.

 

 

[fiddlepaddle]

I think I got mine in 83 or 84, maybe $200, and I know the price came down after that. I seem to remember seeing $99 at Gemco at some point before they closed up and Target moved in.

[+cvga]

On 9/1/2023 at 5:32 PM, 0078265317 said:

18tb is 18,000gb.  225 x 80mb is 18,000gb.  12,000 dollars / 329 = 

36.4741641337

 

So that is a lot of difference.  So it was 36 x more expensive back then.  And 225 x 20,000.  So 18tb worth of files would of costed 4,500,000 dollars back then.

 

123

 

I'm not sure what you're trying to represent with the 36.47 but $4.5M for 18tb back then  / $329 for 18tb today makes data back then 136,778 times more expensive than today! That's insane. 

 

To be fair, buying the 300Mb drives would bring the cost down considerably. 60 drives at $20,000 each would give you 18tb of storage for "only" $1.2 million. 

[CapitanClassic]

1 hour ago, Razzie.P said:

I was watching the videos on "The Making of Karateka" and someone was talking about the C64 and mentioned something like "...by then, everyone was getting the C64 because they were about a hundred bucks."   Was that ever the case, or they exaggerating/misremembering a bit?  I don't ever remember seeing a computer for a hundred bucks as a kid.  I woulda been hustlin' like a mofo to scrap up the cash to get one if that was the case.

 

 

$150

[mr_me]

The floppy drive cost more than the computer.

[Tanooki]

Hah yeah, as does the C64 screen.  Realistically you're at $600 for a computer after likely taxes, but given whatever year that was given the industry crippling 2600 era is falling off with those at $50 it's really not a bad price.  Those game prices aren't bad either largely in the $20-30 range.

[mickster]

14 hours ago, Razzie.P said:

I was watching the videos on "The Making of Karateka" and someone was talking about the C64 and mentioned something like "...by then, everyone was getting the C64 because they were about a hundred bucks."   Was that ever the case, or they exaggerating/misremembering a bit?  I don't ever remember seeing a computer for a hundred bucks as a kid.  I woulda been hustlin' like a mofo to scrap up the cash to get one if that was the case.

 

 

Yep,  Tons of ti-99 computers were sold at the $100 with $50 rebate back in the day.  Also many atari 8-bits were sold for sub $100 price point.  This is what pretty much killed the small computer dealer until they sprung back up  building ibm compatibles in the 90's.

 

What people didn't realize buying those sub $100 dollar computers is that the experience was severely limited without buying a disk drive.  I used a cassette drive for the first couple of years and it works, but wow,  was it slow.

[mickster]

11 hours ago, mr_me said:

The floppy drive cost more than the computer.

Yeah, people didn't know that the disk drives were basically a computer with no keyboard.  The computers were so limited, that it required a 'smart' interface to transfer data. 

[Duewester]

I was paid a penny to buy my first Ti/99-4a in 1983.

Got it at the Navy Exchange for $49.99 (no taxes) with a $50 mail in rebate.

[Krebizfan]

3 hours ago, mickster said:

Yeah, people didn't know that the disk drives were basically a computer with no keyboard.  The computers were so limited, that it required a 'smart' interface to transfer data. 

The 6502 chip was cheaper than a floppy disk controller chip in the early 80s. The bare bones internal single sided disk drive was about $150 in quantity so Commodore was accepting very low margins selling at $200. The case and power supply weren't free. It was such a good deal that Commodore couldn't meet demand.