[InterceptPoint]

As I recall, my original 1984 IBM PC came with 256K. I paid about $250 hard earned bucks to add a 256K expansion card. That got me up to 512K, some of which I would carve off for a “virtual disk” that I would use to load up Lotus 123. We were strictly text mode in those days but Lotus 123 was a remarkable program for it’s time. It was small and it was fast even on my ancient IBM.

[AppyPappy]

Visicalc was cool too.

[AU72]

Lotus 123 was the DOS version of Visicalc which it was derived (or copied) from. It ran in assembler thus it's speed.

Accountants happily paid 5 to 8 thousand dollars for hardware to run 123 on.

[Bob]

As I recall, my original 1984 IBM PC came with 256K.

If I'm not mistaken, you're off by a factor of 4. I believe that the base model came with 64K of RAM and, as I recall, a cassette tape interface. If there was no tape drive connected, the system would boot into a ROM BASIC interpreter. The 360Kbyte 5 1/4-inch floppy drive was an extra-cost option.

I opted for the massive 10 meg hard drive rather than the then-current 5 meg version for only an additional $250 or so over the $250 5 meg model.

[papasmurf]

I stayed with Visi-Calc, Lotus was above my means, at that time. LOL

BTW, the reason Lotus was so incredibly quick is that it was written entirely in assembly language.

If you'd like to know a little more about assembly, by the master, click here for a brief and simple explanation and many links to free assembly language kits and learning websites.