PC Prices 15 Years Ago Today

LordCalin said:
wwJBw.jpg
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This is the machine they used to build Crysis around.
 
caddys83 said:
Packard Bell!!! \o/ I had one of those. Except mine wasnt tower and was only 75 Mhz :cool: And 2GB of [H]ard drive space :p Packard Bell and their Soundcard built-in modem. (warranty horrid)
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I never had anything but problems with that modem/soundcard combo. POS. Every week I had to screw with the com and irq settings.
 
I remember playing with my grandpa's Pentium 60mhz (upgrade from his 386SX 16mhz). CD-ROM video and playing audio on it was amazing. I didn't really like Myst but it was trippy. No disks needed because of the awesome HDD! I think it was like 80MB or something like that.
 
This was about the time I got my first Pentium system. I was so proud.

Locally built in Austin, 2.1gig HD, P166, Matrox card, 128 meg RAM, ~$2500 +$470 for a Princeton 17" monitor. That ad triggered memories as that Epson 500 printer was the first inkjet printer I ever had. Horrible, horrible piece of crap soured me on Epson printers ever since.

Thanks for the memories.
 
GushpinBob said:
Step 1: Invent time machine.
Step 2: Go back to 1996.
Step 3: Buy Apple shares.
Step 4: Go to August 31, 2011
Step 5: Sell all shares.
Step 6: Profit$$$$
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One step was missing :D
 
this ad reminds me of my first computer in the early 90s,

Gateway 2000
386SX 33mhz
10mb ram
60mb hard drive

very heavy computer with a heavy 14 inch crt monitor

$2999
 
I remember PC's were new and exciting back then. It was a great adventure and I had a lot of fun with it back in the day. I remember most fondly getting my first dedicated video card.

Great stuff! Thanks for ride down memory lane. :cool:
 
hawtrawkr said:
reminds me of when I dropped 5k on a p3 500mhz machine back in 99.
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man tell me about it, i recall paying a boat load for my intel PIII 533, intels first 133fsb chips and then paying about $400 for a 40G harddrive, and my 19' CRT was $500! and lets not even get into ram prices, 64MB of ram ithink was just under $200, prices in CAD.
 
GushpinBob said:
Step 1: Invent time machine.
Step 2: Go back to 1996.
Step 3: Buy Apple shares.
Step 4: Go to August 31, 2011
Step 5: Sell all shares.
Click to expand...

Better yet go back to 1986, buy Microsoft shares then go to 2000. Apple is today's darling but the performance of Microsoft's stock between 1986 and 2000 makes Apple's current rise chump change.
 
GushpinBob said:
Step 1: Invent time machine.
Step 2: Go back to 1996.
Step 3: Buy Apple shares.
Step 4: Go to August 31, 2011
Step 5: Sell all shares.
Click to expand...

Seriously. My aunt had quite a few shares over the years, but was convinced by another aunt to sell them 1) right before the first iMac came about, 2) right before the first iPod was released, and 3) right before the iPhone was released. Yeah, needless to say, for a while my aunt wanted to kill her sister, never mind her own lack of judgment.

My first computer was a Mac Performa 635CD. Got it for $2K at Good Guys in late 1995. 33MHz 68LC040 CPU, 5MB RAM, 250MB HDD, 2X speed CD-ROM drive, System 7.5 OS. Bad boy took care of me from junior high to about junior year of high school (2000). It did eventually become sort of a PITA in terms of compatibility, since it was a pre-PPC Mac and thus couldn't even run contemporary Mac software soon after I got it, never mind deal with files from Windows computers without tedious conversions. Still, I played Syndicate and Chuck Yeager's Air Combat to death on it. Good times.
 
I remember those days. Thought it was stupid to have something useless that was so expensive. I didn't get into it until Doom came out with the affordable 386 processors...and 4MB ram was a LOT, but you still needed ram compression to run games, hence the $50 floppy ram doubler...althoug I used something else, can't remember what it was called now.
 
tricky0502 said:
i remember my dad payed $3000 for our p1 100mhz 8mb ram pc. it was from a custom pc shop in the area.

a side note, that is the system that got me started on pc. after i blew it up for the second time i had to learn how to fix it because my parents werent going to pay anymore.
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Sounds like me.

Gateway 2000 "P5-133" ... Pentium 133, 24MB RAM (dad paid for the upgrade over the standard 16MB), 1.6GB hard drive, 8x CD-ROM, 28.8k USRobotics ISA modem (turned out to actually be a 33.6!!), and a Tseng Labs ET6000 2MB PCI video card. 17" Vivitron monitor and HP Deskjet 600C. $2800.. I remember the build date stickers on every piece of hardware in the computer were 6/26/96

I broke that computer a few times, and I remember being on the phone with Gateway tech support trying to get it fixed once before dad got home (I was 9).

We ended up upgrading that system a bit over the years... I think we went to 80MB RAM (replaced the 2x4MB sticks with 2x32MB sticks and left the 2x8MB in it). We tried one of those old Evergreen OverDrive chips that was 400MHz, but the computer refused to boot into Windows. We ended up returning that for a 233MHz Overdrive chip that worked fine. It also ended up with a 13.6GB hard drive (I remember running into the 8.4GB HD limit and had to use some workaround for it).

A few months later my uncle bought a Gateway with a P166MMX and 64MB SDRAM. I was so jealous.
 
Crazy. Although I didn't get my first computer till after college (B&W G3 300Mhz w/monitor @ $3400). I wasn't REALLY interested in computers, but I did like gadgets. Then when I got my own PC, things took off. It was too hard to upgrade a Mac back then (and things have not changed much).
 
LOL.. I remember buying my first Pentium computer (first generation Pentium). It was a Gateway 2000 P90 (Pentium 90mhz) ..haha!
 
GushpinBob said:
Step 1: Invent time machine.
Step 2: Go back to 1996.
Step 3: Buy Apple shares.
Step 4: Go to August 31, 2011
Step 5: Sell all shares.
Click to expand...

I bought a bunch of shares of Apple at $32/share after I got out of highschool. I sold them a year later and made a nice profit, but I can't begin to tell you how I wish I had hung on to those shares, because I sure as hell didn't sell them for $400+ or whatever they're going for now.
 
We didn't even have a PC back in those days. My family was still using the typewriter. The cost was too high for s to afford one.
It wasn't until my sister donated one to me in high school. I bought my own when I graduated and still have it under my desk. :D
 
I had a TRS-80 Model II as a kid and my parents threw it away when we moved :( Those floppies seemed almost like 1sq ft.
 
Here's my PC from 1994 and the cost for each of the parts in USD:

157.50 Intel 486 66 Mhz
273.00 VESA local bus motherboard w/256K cache / 5 yr. warr.
301.35 8 Meg RAM (60ns)
190.05 Orchid Kelvin 64-bit 2 Meg RAM Video card
26.25 Controller (VESA)
64.05 Black Mini Tower
45.15 Black 1.44 Teac floppy drive
18.90 Black Mouse
21.00 Black Keyboard
320.25 528 Meg Conner HD
168.00 Sound Blaster Pro Multi CD
194.25 Black Panasonic double-speed CD Rom Drive
393.75 Black 15-inch digital Monitor (non-interlaced .28 pitch)

Grand Total = $2173.50

Funny - especially when compared to the specs below (from my build 2 years ago)
 
Specs of my circa March 1993 machine:
AMD 386DX-40, 4MB RAM, 130MB Maxtor HDD, 2 serial/1 parallel ports, 3.5" and 5.25" high density floppy drives, Trident 8900C 1MB ISA video card (slowest card ever), no soundcard, 14" TTX CRT monitor, Windows 3.1 (on six 3.5" floppies!)... $1,400

18 years later and my current i7-2600K machine is probably worth 75% of that old machine's cost.
 
i remember i bought my very first plextor 4x cd-writer for 150 from buy.com, and it was such a sweet deal.
 
Lol @ the monitor for $400. That's more than an entire computer package today. And the monitor would be larger, and flat.
 
Some other old school hardware prices... and what you could get today

2MB of RAM = $100 (1993), could get 16GB of DDR3-1600 RAM today (8,000x more RAM)
210MB hard drive = $240 (1994), could get three 2TB 5,400rpm hard drives today (almost 30,000x more HD space)
14.4Kbps Rockwell RPI dial-up modem - $70 (1994) - could get a gazillion 56k modems on eBay today
Diamond Speedstar 64 (Cirrus Logic 5434 1MB ISA) - $200 (1994), could get Radeon HD 6870 today
Philips 2x CD-ROM drive (with controller) - $100 (1994), could get six DVD burners today
Dell Latitude XP DX4-100 laptop - $4,800 (1994), maxed out Dell XPS 17 - $2,935 today
CTX 15" CRT monitor - $240 (1997), could get a 25" TN panel 1080p LCD monitor today
AMD K6-2 300 - $250 (1998), could get Core i5-2500K today (at least 100x faster)
IBM 14GXP 12.9GB HDD (one of the first 7,200rpm ATA drives) - $350 (1999), could get 240GB Vertex 2 SSD today
GeForce2 GTS 32MB video card - $225 (2001), could get 2GB GeForce GTX 560 Ti today
The 1989 386 computer that was $9,000... could get a decent used car today (seriously... you could've gotten a new economy car for less back then)

Hard to believe that this stuff was once this expensive. And of course who could never forget when there was a Dell ad at the back of every computer magazine known to exist back then...
 
I was moving product out of the local Computer City in that time frame. Before that Acer Aspire came along, all computers came in any color you wanted as long as it was white. Moved a few Packard Bells to people who asked for them. But those damn cases were a bitch to get off.

Sometimes the computer companies would pay the salesman $75 - $150 to move certain product. Of course I only sold what the customer needed, but there was a guy who moved computers like used cars. His first question to potential customers was "Ready to buy today?" If the customer said they were looking, he'd pawn them off on some other salesman.

Ahhh...the good 'ol days.
 
bigdogchris said:
How do you run applications and an operating system with GUI in 8-16MB of ram? My computer from 1997 had 32 MB of ram and I was told it was more than I would ever need.
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And this past week...

I bought an extra 4GB of ram to up my system to 8GB because I needed to install Win7 to run everything in 64bit mode... because my GTX 275 video card with 1.78GB of video ram was being mapped above 4GB by the motherboard BIOS and causing some problems in games if loading was interrupted or lost focus.

4GB of ram cost $31. The GTX 275 can be had for about $100-150.

And about 20 years ago I bought a 2MB 72 pin Simm for about $250.

And the Seagate Dockstar (a highly customized Sheevaplug) I hacked to run Debian that I bought for $30 has more horsepower than every machine in that ad.

Yeah. I feel old.
 
cqcumber said:
i remember i bought my very first plextor 4x cd-writer for 150 from buy.com, and it was such a sweet deal.
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I was clearing my crate of important papers the other day, shredding old documents and whatnot. I came across a souvenir of my computing days' past.

I recognized it even though all of the ink had completely faded from it. It was a receipt for Egghead Software for my 2x SCSI CD Recorder.

It cost $999.97. With discount. Fortunately, I took a picture of the receipt before the ink faded.

920cdr.jpg


I got far more than my money's worth out of that thing. Learned a lot about AV stuff because of what that thing sparked: being able to record my favourite records to CDR. Audio mastering, inputs, grounding, levels, preamps, etc... All of it became quite useful knowledge.

And still...

I still can't believe I paid a fucking grand for a CD Recorder...
 
I paid $2000 for a MAC back in the old school days....

wait...wait..wait. why are they still $2000?

HAHA, suckers!!!!!
 
techrat said:
I was clearing my crate of important papers the other day, shredding old documents and whatnot. I came across a souvenir of my computing days' past.

I recognized it even though all of the ink had completely faded from it. It was a receipt for Egghead Software for my 2x SCSI CD Recorder.

It cost $999.97. With discount. Fortunately, I took a picture of the receipt before the ink faded.

920cdr.jpg


I got far more than my money's worth out of that thing. Learned a lot about AV stuff because of what that thing sparked: being able to record my favourite records to CDR. Audio mastering, inputs, grounding, levels, preamps, etc... All of it became quite useful knowledge.

And still...

I still can't believe I paid a fucking grand for a CD Recorder...
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That is mind blowingly great.
 
I had a stack of ComputerShoppers from the late 80s and early 90s that I kept around for years.
Last time I dug out a bunch of that stuff mice got into them and made mess. Trashed them all after that.
There was one good one out of the bunch; but don't ask me where it is now. :(
I ordered my first PC out of Computer Shopper. A USA Flex 486DX 33Mhz in 1989. Paid $2500 for it.
Funny thing; that was the genesis of my career and I didn't even realize it. I just wanted a upgrade from my Atari 400 I bought in 1983.
 
caddys83 said:
Packard Bell!!! \o/ I had one of those. Except mine wasnt tower and was only 75 Mhz :cool: And 2GB of [H]ard drive space :p Packard Bell and their Soundcard built-in modem. (warranty horrid)
Click to expand...

As did I.
Mine was a 486-SX-25mhz; 4 MB of ram, 400 MB harddrive, 2xcd-rom, 9600 baud modem. lol those were the days.
 
Thanks for this post! It brought back a few memories. I used to peddle that shit back in day when I worked at The Wiz. Nice margin on those products! Got nice commission selling the bullshit warranty with the computer and as a bonus, my own personal configuration and tutoring services.


And OMG, fucking RAM Doubler! LMAO!
 
Chaotic Master said:
The price for ink cartridges is still the same. Sad.
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Not really. Ink is a commodity, so the fact that the price hasnt significantly increased with inflation over the years is good :)

Of course, you could argue the fact that the shit was overpriced to begin with, but I digress.
 
My first rig is in the sig, used to play the original DOOM at less than twenty frames per second, and when DOOM 2 came out, it took up half the hard disk, talk about long load times. I have the brochure from that system around somewhere, I'll see if I can find it and post a pic.

Those prices for RAM bring back memories, of how I spent a lot of dough to get to 2MB so I could play F15 Strike Eagle 3.

I learned a lot about hard drives very quickly back then, the crook who sold us the machine had replaced the factory IDE drive with an MFM hooked to an expansion card, you had to manually park the drive heads on MFM drives before shutting the system off or else they could run across the surface of the disk, much like a needle across a vinyl record. That disk had bad sectors like a clay pigeon at a shooting range.
 
Those prices are very expensive by today's standards. Yet, accounting for the cost of inflation, the perceived cost back then was even more. For example, what cost $2000 in 1996 would cost $2750.37 in 2010.
 
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