Back down MEMORY Lane

The Macintosh 128K

wiki wrote:It had an initial selling price of $2,495 (equivalent to $5,683 in 2016). The Macintosh was introduced by the now-famous $370,000 (equivalent to $842,751 in 2016) television commercial by Ridley Scott, "1984," that most notably aired on CBS during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984. Sales of the Macintosh were strong from its initial release on January 24, 1984, and reached 70,000 units on May 3, 1984. Upon the release of its successor, the Macintosh 512K, it was rebranded as the Macintosh 128K.

The original Macintosh had around .012 megabytes of memory. Current smart phones being shipped come with a minimum of 16GB. That is 123,000 times more memory than that Macintosh.

The legendary television commercial "1984" that introduced the Apple Macintosh, in 1984 which capitalized (literally) off of George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_(advertisement)

https://youtu.be/VtvjbmoDx-I

Just paid about 1/4 the amount of what it cost me for a 20MB Sider drive for a 5TB Seagate.(which is attached to my 1TB MackbookPro with 16GB ram and not to that really old Apple II GS with I can't remember how little ram that initially needed the 5" floppy disk as the place to store stuff).

Can remember upgrading the ram in the Apple II (not the GS)from 8k to 16k.

Times have changed.

Somehow I keep wondering when a real-world version of the Loki 1000 is going to come out and start buying replacement parts to clone itself in my storage shed.

cthia wrote:Memory was so limited way back when, but programmers did so much more with it.

I know this refers to a Console rather than a multi-function computer, but Shigeru Miyamoto was able to condense Pokemon Gold/Silver so efficiently that not only did it fit on the cartridge that it was originally meant to (having previously been set to require a custom cartridge of almost twice the size) but he was able to fit in virtually the entire region covered in the prequel Red/Blue/Yellow.

A similar issue happened with Sega. Their hardware was significantly inferior to Nintendo's, but the stuff that they managed to make it do... wow. Check out each generation of Sonic and Mario, you'll see Sonic was faster, smoother and more visually complex, despite running on inferior hardware.
It was like seeing a Skoda overtake a Jaguar on a motorway.

Not as much has changed as you might expect. Just got a new tablet (my old HP pad's OS is not recognized by many web pages). Negotiated a good price on a Samsung for $370 aud, but a 128 gb micro sd card is $228 aud. I'll be getting a 64 gb for now.

Daryl wrote:Not as much has changed as you might expect. Just got a new tablet (my old HP pad's OS is not recognized by many web pages). Negotiated a good price on a Samsung for $370 aud, but a 128 gb micro sd card is $228 aud. I'll be getting a 64 gb for now.

B&H Photo has them for $49.95 USD (free shipping at least in US) for fast and reliable Sandisk cards. That is $71.47 aud. I deal with them a lot. They have been very reliable.


You can get their 200GB Sandisk microsd card for $143 aud.


Shipping (at least in the US) has never taken over 2-3 days before product is at your doorsteps. Due to free expedited shipping in my part of the US. Not sure if they serve Australia but there is a toll-free number and "live chat" available at the site.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1 ... _card.html

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1 ... osdxc.html

Michael Everett wrote:

cthia wrote:Memory was so limited way back when, but programmers did so much more with it.

I know this refers to a Console rather than a multi-function computer, but Shigeru Miyamoto was able to condense Pokemon Gold/Silver so efficiently that not only did it fit on the cartridge that it was originally meant to (having previously been set to require a custom cartridge of almost twice the size) but he was able to fit in virtually the entire region covered in the prequel Red/Blue/Yellow.

A similar issue happened with Sega. Their hardware was significantly inferior to Nintendo's, but the stuff that they managed to make it do... wow. Check out each generation of Sonic and Mario, you'll see Sonic was faster, smoother and more visually complex, despite running on inferior hardware.
It was like seeing a Skoda overtake a Jaguar on a motorway.

Given that DNA is the software storage for the construction and operation of living things, it is interesting to see some of what it is like. There is a snail that is known to produce some needed proteins by reading the DNA strand in one direction, and others by reading it in the reverse direction. Subroutine equivalents also exist in DNA.

I know that a number of things have been devised by studying how the mechanical, etc. parts of living things work and duplicating the effect. Does anyone know if there have been any such results from studying DNA coding tricks yet

Back in the mid 80's the company I worked for got a deal: ten Maxtor 80 Megabyte 5 1/4" full-height boat-anchor hard drives for only $1,600 each.

We had two VAX 11/750 computers, each with 4 MB RAM and 2 Fujitsu Eagle 350 MB hard drives: 19" rack mount, 10" high, 28" long, 200 pounds, $12,000 each.
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It takes two to make peace. It only takes one to make war.

cthia wrote:Memory was so limited way back when, but programmers did so much more with it. There were so many tricks of the trade to augment limited memory back then. Like "page flipping" and double, triple and quad buffering.

When I recall that Gates managed to squeeze off all of BASICA into 64K!...

Well, that's truly chomping at the bits.

I have three computers at home, all run. The oldest is an Apple IIe which is 33 years old and I still play several games on it; Zork and the Wizardry (trilogy). I mainly used it for work files and writing. I had to find someone to transfer all my info from the big floppies to flashdrives as a backup but it was worth it. Needless to say I do not worry about the Apple IIe being hacked it is not hooked up to the internet. Just because it is old does not meaning is is useless.

Senior Chief wrote:

cthia wrote:Memory was so limited way back when, but programmers did so much more with it. There were so many tricks of the trade to augment limited memory back then. Like "page flipping" and double, triple and quad buffering.

When I recall that Gates managed to squeeze off all of BASICA into 64K!...

Well, that's truly chomping at the bits.

I have three computers at home, all run. The oldest is an Apple IIe which is 33 years old and I still play several games on it; Zork and the Wizardry (trilogy). I mainly used it for work files and writing. I had to find someone to transfer all my info from the big floppies to flashdrives as a backup but it was worth it. Needless to say I do not worry about the Apple IIe being hacked it is not hooked up to the internet. Just because it is old does not meaning is is useless.

I collect calculators and computers. I have two functional Apples with cards, disks and all. My aunt still uses an Apple for her recipes. She insists. It takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

There was once a joke that said "In the aftermath of an apocalypse, the only survivors will be cockroaches and Apples." A testament to the robustness of those machines.

The bugs will inherit the computer and will finally have unlimited access to software.

They'll also inherit man's sin of taking a bite off the Apple.