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PERSONAL COMPUTERS; CD-ROM for the Common Man [1989!]
ny times ^ | November 28, 1989 | PETER H. LEWIS

Posted on 04/19/2016 1:26:22 PM PDT by daniel1212

THE Headstart Technologies Company of Great Neck, L.I., has introduced two new personal computers equipped with CD-ROM drives, becoming the first maker of personal computers to offer low-cost CD-ROM technology to the home, education and small-business markets...

CD-ROM stands for compact disk read only memory, a laser-based system of storing and replaying large amounts of text, graphics or sound on a single five-inch platter. For example, one CD-ROM disk can hold the entire contents of an encyclopedia, or a shelf's worth of other reference books.

For $2,999, Headstart is offering the Headstart III-CD, which differs from the LX-CD in that it has a more powerful 80286 microprocessor, one megabyte of working memory and a pocket-size external 2,400-baud modem.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Computers/Internet; Education; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: nostalgia
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To: daniel1212

http://articles.latimes.com/1986-09-10/business/fi-13177_1_personal-computer

....

I remember seeing my first 386. I couldn’t believe how fast the DIR command scrolled off the screen.

The first IBM clone I bought was a used 386 from a builder. It was bargain at $1500.


41 posted on 04/19/2016 4:25:15 PM PDT by Moonman62 (Make America Great Again!)
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To: Lazamataz

I remember having a $5,000 Ohio Scientific computer in the store because it had a 10 meg hard drive. That was 1981. I weighed 6 pounds back then. 6 freaking pounds!!

A 64 gig SD card? That’s a dam lie.


42 posted on 04/19/2016 6:01:18 PM PDT by AppyPappy (If you really want to irritate someone, point out something obvious they are trying hard to ignore.)
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To: webheart
It did! It was located right next to the Reset button.

The good ol days! And "illegal operations."

43 posted on 04/19/2016 6:02:52 PM PDT by daniel1212 ( Turn to the Lord Jesus as a damned and destitute sinner+ trust Him to save you, then follow Him!)
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To: daniel1212
one CD-ROM disk can hold the entire contents of an encyclopedia

I wonder if that volume had an entry for Moore's Law.

44 posted on 04/19/2016 6:09:51 PM PDT by pa_dweller (Go ahead Libs, drink the kool-aid. It's got electrolytes!)
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To: rdl6989
It would under XP and perhaps later OS flavors up to Windows 10, which (with Classic Shell, is the best and most stable OS Windows made yet, though in need of more customization. You may want to see my Windows 8 pro review (upgrade XP to Windows 8 with Classic Shell ) and on the Window 10 preview .

I do keep an eye on the available RAM via an app in the system tray, and reboot Firefox (the biggest user) if needed, but i rarely shut off the PC, just hit Scroll Lock which is configured to put it to sleep. Thank God for tweaks.

Memory Restart( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/memory-restart) shows how much ram FF is using, and enables easy restart to flush memory.

45 posted on 04/19/2016 6:12:30 PM PDT by daniel1212 ( Turn to the Lord Jesus as a damned and destitute sinner+ trust Him to save you, then follow Him!)
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To: Blue Highway
holy moly I’ve never had that many tabs open at once. Does your computer even function with that much open at once? I have 16gb of ram and I rarely have 5 tabs open at any one time.

Indeed, even with only a dual core 2.93ghz CPU. I keep an eye on the CPU usage and ram, and as explained above, sometimes reboot Firefox if needed. The Dell 780 has seen a lot of dutie for a old PC you can get for about 100.00, though i hope to see the box with an AMD 6350 (3.9ghz) CPU back in action to the glory of God, which PC is down, maybe bad mobo.

The tabs are pages i frequent or want readily available, plus ones i mean to read, as well as ones i forgot to shut. And i see Firefox (derivatives are good also) as the best for so-called "power users" as no other browser comes close, due to its extensions. I use the

 "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -no-remote  -p
switch to run multiple profiles, like one for research/posting and another for online shopping etc. Thank God we can do so.

The FR posting form enhancer by FReeper cynwoody (http://cynwoody.googlepages.com/fr_posting_form_enhancer.html) is also helpful here, as is BBCodeXtra.

46 posted on 04/19/2016 6:27:05 PM PDT by daniel1212 ( Turn to the Lord Jesus as a damned and destitute sinner+ trust Him to save you, then follow Him!)
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To: AppyPappy
A 64 gig SD card? That’s a dam lie.

And SanDisk Cruzer 32GB (16GB x 2) Cruzer Blade USB 2.0 Flash Drive for 10.65

47 posted on 04/19/2016 6:31:18 PM PDT by daniel1212 ( Turn to the Lord Jesus as a damned and destitute sinner+ trust Him to save you, then follow Him!)
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To: jonno
Yes - and who doesn’t miss their blazing fast 56k dial-up modem?!

Up till 2005 that is what i used, for free. Even had a device that kept my connection while i answered the phone, and used a hardware modem. It got us by, thank God. Yet Verizon charges 30.00 a month for just 7mbps tops, with no other options. But Comcast is deceptive and more expensive.

48 posted on 04/19/2016 6:36:08 PM PDT by daniel1212 ( Turn to the Lord Jesus as a damned and destitute sinner+ trust Him to save you, then follow Him!)
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To: pa_dweller
I wonder if that volume had an entry for Moore's Law.

I remember an edition of the Bible that would fit on a 3.5'' floppy. But sound and graphics is another story.

49 posted on 04/19/2016 6:39:56 PM PDT by daniel1212 ( Turn to the Lord Jesus as a damned and destitute sinner+ trust Him to save you, then follow Him!)
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To: W.
My first computer was a pieced-together from new parts 486DX2/80 desktop and cost a small fortune. It got me online, barely [via 56kbps dialup modem], in 1995. Now I have a nice HP laptop that cost me about $40 more than what I spent back then on 2 8MB 72-pin RAM chips @ $183 each. I regret nothing, though 6 months later, I saw those same mem chips priced at $12/ea. That was my FIRST lesson... ;)

And i have thrown away PCs that cost someone hundreds of dollars, though like an old MS 3.1 i had, they would work well for word processing. But not the Internet today.

Now i see Kingston Digital 240GB SSDNow V300 SATA 3 for 65.00, the prices of which are decreasing slower.

50 posted on 04/19/2016 6:46:42 PM PDT by daniel1212 ( Turn to the Lord Jesus as a damned and destitute sinner+ trust Him to save you, then follow Him!)
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To: daniel1212

For opening that many tabs at once, your computer should flog you for being a sadist !


51 posted on 04/19/2016 7:09:45 PM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (Resist We Much)
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To: justlittleoleme
I got lucky, after about a year with just cartridges my dad splurged on the expansion module, which I think had a RAM upgrade and a 5.25 floppy drive:


52 posted on 04/19/2016 8:40:19 PM PDT by Boogieman
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To: daniel1212
Compaq’s Deskpro 486/50L will be the Houston company’s most powerful desktop system. The 486/50L will cost $11,299 to $13,999, depending on how large a hard disk drive is included, and will be widely available “in the fourth quarter” of this year...

I remember that system to this day, it was a solid performer. I installed one at Farmland Foods in KC, IIRC, with 4MB of RAM, 4Mbs IBM Token Ring, WD-1007 ESDI controller and a Micropolis 330MB hard drive! Running Netware 3, and it was a screamer. File access on that server was so much faster than the files on their AS400 (of course, the upgrade from Twin-Ax to Token Ring helped too.)

Mark

53 posted on 04/19/2016 10:20:09 PM PDT by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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To: West Texas Chuck

“You ever do them Tesla coils there hoss?”

I had a friend that built one about 8 feet high. It shot out some seriously scary bolts 5 or 6 feet long. I would not get near it. It would probably fry every computer within 100 yards!


54 posted on 04/19/2016 10:27:56 PM PDT by TexasRepublic (Socialism is the gospel of envy and the religion of thieves. Socialism is governmental theft!)
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To: BubbaBasher
My first CD-ROM drive cost $500. You could only get one with a SCSI interface at the time.

I remember that too, and when they began coming down in price, at about $300, I remember when SCO came out with a new distribution of Unix, available on floppy disk, ct-tape, or cd-dom, and they priced the CD distribution about $300 less than the other 2.

Can you believe that drives that will burn BD-100 (100GB) are now running under $100?

Mark

55 posted on 04/19/2016 10:27:59 PM PDT by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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To: topspinr

The first computer I worked on was a DEC PDP-8.

The first computer I owned was an Altos 586, which I bought used in 1986. I was working as a programmer for a database management company, and they used an Altos 2086 (80286 processor.) I bought the Altos 586 from a church for $1000, and it had a 10MHz 8086 processor, 512MB RAM, a 10MB hard drive, and ran Altos Xenix. No graphics, it used serial terminals, and it came with a pair of Altos II terminals (Wyse 60 equiv.) Since I needed to load the Xenix development system on it for work, I replaced the hard drive with a used 20MB drive for another $1000.

http://www.oldcomputers.net/altos-586.html

Mark


56 posted on 04/19/2016 11:19:43 PM PDT by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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To: Boogieman; Impy

And RAM was so tight, especially if you had to load network drivers. Somewhere around here I still have a copy of Quarterdeck QEMM, which would allow you to optimize the memory you had, load drivers into upper memory, and even allow you to map RAM into unused areas of your bios, so you could actually get a bit over 700KB ram available, even with mouse, network, and other device drivers available.

Looking back, it’s hard to believe that there were versions of word processors and spreadsheets that would run in less than 1MB ram, and could be stored on 360KB disk drives!

Mark


57 posted on 04/19/2016 11:32:05 PM PDT by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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To: BubbaBasher

Moving from a 300bps acousti-coupler to a 2400bps modem was incredible. And from there to a US Robotics Dual Standard 9600bps, WooHoo!!!

Mark


58 posted on 04/19/2016 11:34:57 PM PDT by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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To: W.

Memmaker was good, but nowhere near as good as Quarterdeck’s QEMM. MS DOS 6 & QEMM Rocked!

Mark


59 posted on 04/19/2016 11:38:55 PM PDT by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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To: Neidermeyer

...And a “Green Card” had nothing to do with immigration! :-)

Mark


60 posted on 04/19/2016 11:44:51 PM PDT by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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