On 7/11/2011 1:56, Invisible wrote:
> I wonder how many octets you can fit on one side of A4 paper? You could
> probably *print out* 512KB and not use all that many trees...

The source code to the OS was a shoebox full of microfiche.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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> On 10/07/2011 6:55 AM, Warp wrote:
>> I still remember the time when 4 MB in a PC was a pretty decent amount
>> of RAM (and more expensive than 4 GB or RAM today).
>
> And I remember when you had to add an additional 384k to the 640k
> conventional memory to make it 1 meg. Now my laptop has 8 Gig
>

I remember when having 48K of RAM was huge. I also remember an ad for a 
5Mb hard drive for $5000. It's size: 18.5" x 8" x 4.25". It had it's own 
power supply.

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Alain <aze### [at] qwertyorg> wrote:
> I remember when having 48K of RAM was huge. I also remember an ad for a 
> 5Mb hard drive for $5000. It's size: 18.5" x 8" x 4.25". It had it's own 
> power supply.

  I don't remember it, but I have been told that such hard drives used to
be the size of a fridge at some point. (And probably more expensive than
a car.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 12/07/2011 07:17 AM, Warp wrote:

>    I don't remember it, but I have been told that such hard drives used to
> be the size of a fridge at some point. (And probably more expensive than
> a car.)

I don't know about hard drives, but the old drum memories used to be 
huge, so I'm told. As you say, about the size of a fridge.

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On 7/11/2011 23:17, Warp wrote:
>    I don't remember it, but I have been told that such hard drives used to
> be the size of a fridge at some point. (And probably more expensive than
> a car.)

Drums were very big, as Andrew said.

Disk drives when I started were about 80cm wide, a meter or more deep, and 
about chest high. The disks themselves were maybe half a meter diameter, a 
third of a meter tall, had six platters (and top and bottom of course) and 
were heavy enough they were inconvenient to carry with one hand, altho you 
could lift them. Oh, and they held four meg. (We had two drives, a CPU, a 
printer, and one other thing I forget what it was, and each cabinet was 
about that big, except the printer was somewhat bigger because it had to 
hold the 132 paper and all, and the CPU had the card reader and keyboard on 
it as well as the front panel switches.)

Drives for a CP/M machine that could hold 8 meg were the size a color laser 
printer is today.

When the high school finally replaced the old NCR-50 mainframe (such as it 
was) with a PR1ME, the disk drive was in a cabinet literally as big as a 
fridge. However, if you opened it up, the cabinet was empty but for some 
wiring and a disk drive maybe 10cm high. The head of the department couldn't 
stop laughing for about 20 minutes.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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> Alain<aze### [at] qwertyorg>  wrote:
>> I remember when having 48K of RAM was huge. I also remember an ad for a
>> 5Mb hard drive for $5000. It's size: 18.5" x 8" x 4.25". It had it's own
>> power supply.
>
>    I don't remember it, but I have been told that such hard drives used to
> be the size of a fridge at some point. (And probably more expensive than
> a car.)
>

That one was one of the very first ordinary consumer hard drives available.
It was colour and style matched for the Apple ][. It was made to stand 
on top of the Apple ][ case. Same width and hight. The other dimention 
matched the depth of the cover.

The ad put "More storage than you could ever use"... I have many 
individual files that just wont fit on that one.

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On 7/12/2011 17:23, Alain wrote:
>  I have many individual files that just wont fit on that one.

I remember when Myst came out on CD, I thought "Well, there's the end of 
pirated games. Where would you possibly put so much data?"

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> When the high school finally replaced the old NCR-50 mainframe (such as it 
> was) with a PR1ME, the disk drive was in a cabinet literally as big as a 
> fridge. However, if you opened it up, the cabinet was empty but for some 
> wiring and a disk drive maybe 10cm high. The head of the department couldn't 
> stop laughing for about 20 minutes.

  Maybe back then it was a questio of vendors thinking that customers would
think "if it isn't (physically) big, it can't be good".

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 13/07/2011 01:23 AM, Alain wrote:

> That one was one of the very first ordinary consumer hard drives available.
> It was colour and style matched for the Apple ][. It was made to stand
> on top of the Apple ][ case. Same width and hight. The other dimention
> matched the depth of the cover.
>
> The ad put "More storage than you could ever use"... I have many
> individual files that just wont fit on that one.

It probably *is* more storage than you could ever use... WITH AN APPLE 
][! ;-)

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On 7/12/2011 23:47, Warp wrote:
> Darren New<dne### [at] sanrrcom>  wrote:
>> When the high school finally replaced the old NCR-50 mainframe (such as it
>> was) with a PR1ME, the disk drive was in a cabinet literally as big as a
>> fridge. However, if you opened it up, the cabinet was empty but for some
>> wiring and a disk drive maybe 10cm high. The head of the department couldn't
>> stop laughing for about 20 minutes.
>
>    Maybe back then it was a questio of vendors thinking that customers would
> think "if it isn't (physically) big, it can't be good".

Yeah, we weren't sure what it was. There were wires running from the box to 
lights at various places on the front panel, so it wasn't like we had an 
entire rack with one U filled or something like that. I suspect it was 
indeed the marketing department.  I suspect you could have put four drives 
in and wasted about half the space with wires running to lights far from the 
drives, tho.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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