Old School Computer Ads - 10MB Hard Disk for Only $3398!

I started working at Intel in 1990. This ad was printed in the 1990s... When the average hard disk had about 20,000 "places" to look:



These are fantastic!

10 Old School Computer Ads that Prove Just How Far Technology Has Come

Computers have come a long way since their birth in the earlier part of the 20th century.

If you want a good idea of how far they’ve actually come, skim through these computer advertisements that have been put out in newspapers and magazines through the years.

My dad had a Guinness World Records book from... 1998 or 1999, somewhere around there.

I recently looked in the technology "world records" and focused on computers; At that time, the world record for the fastest CPU was a "supercomputer" with somewhere around a 600MHz CPU.

We just look back on that and laugh nowadays. (Current world record is something over 8GHz, or 8000MHz, I don't remember the exact numbers though, sorry. )

Also worth noting is computer CPUs back then only had one core; Today even dual-cores are going the way of the Dodo for quad, hex, and octo-core CPUs.

Reminds me when I would play the original Zork game on my old family computer, can't for the life of me remember what kind of computer it was, I want to say it was a Coleco. It is amazing that text based games are still fun to me.

a reply to: Benevolent Heretic

I remember my all powerful MMX CPU with a whopping 16MB hard drive.

There is a niche market for those old school PC's-My old commodore 64 would be worth a pretty penny these days.

a reply to: Aldakoopa

A Pentium III from 1999 clocked 1ghz so you must have either the decade or processing speed wrong.

I started with a ZX81. it had just 16k of ram, no hard drive needed

My first pc was a 486 powered device. It ran at 2mgz. Had a dard drive of 150mgb. and 16mg of ram.
I remember paying £80 for a 32mg stick of ram.

That's the thing. It used to take you 2.5-4k to get a higher end PC. Now you can get an incredible PC for under 1k. You have to go hardcore exotic to reach 4k. Heck, I'm typing on a refurb sub $400 i5 that's a year old and should keep on rocking without any noticeable drop in performance for the next 18 months or so.

I had a 20 mb HDD and I wanted to upgrade. I went to Sam's club and was looking at a 140 mb HDD. The employee there actually stated " that is all you will ever need ". Now I have 2 TB total using SSDs.Also , I paid $200 for my first 4mb SIMM

originally posted by: GetHyped
a reply to: Aldakoopa

A Pentium III from 1999 clocked 1ghz so you must have either the decade or processing speed wrong.

I believe the book was from '98. There were huge leaps in CPU speeds made around the new millenium, and just a few years later they were pushing through 2GHz, so depending on when exactly this book was made, it's still possible that the fastest speed at that time was around 600MHz. I remember I really, really laughed at it when I read it, so it was below 1GHz.

originally posted by: Aldakoopa
My dad had a Guinness World Records book from... 1998 or 1999, somewhere around there.

I recently looked in the technology "world records" and focused on computers; At that time, the world record for the fastest CPU was a "supercomputer" with somewhere around a 600MHz CPU.

We just look back on that and laugh nowadays. (Current world record is something over 8GHz, or 8000MHz, I don't remember the exact numbers though, sorry.

)

Also worth noting is computer CPUs back then only had one core; Today even dual-cores are going the way of the Dodo for quad, hex, and octo-core CPUs.

If you go by companies tech shows , the fastest processor was previewed somewhere around 2009 . It was an Intel cell processor running at over 1 thz

a reply to: Aldakoopa

Desktop computers were faster than 600mhz in the late '98/'99s, let alone supercomputers.

a reply to: Benevolent Heretic

This is pretty cool, but as someone who works in IT and has worked on or with computers as a hobby since the 90's isn't all that surprising. After all, we are just basically looking at Moore's Law in reverse. It also requires you to know what an exponential graph looks like as well as how one behaves. Sorry, I don't mean to be a buzzkill or anything. I gave you a S&F anyways.

Guy is thinking single CPU pentium2 or early pentium 3. Supercomputers were about scaling usually consumer available cpu's into the 1,000s.

I had a p3 1000mhz in 2000. P4 introduced netburst, which greatly increased the pipeline, decreased efficiency per clock, and had a big jump in clockspeed. I think the first gen saw 1.6-2ghz, but that wasn't until late 2000 or so.

Not to hi-jack the thread, but are there any Halt & Catch Fire fans here? I'm hooked. It's on AMC on Sunday nights. It's a pretty cool look back to early to mid 80's tech, especially during the early personal computer/internet boom. Those ads kind of reminded me of the show.

a reply to: Benevolent Heretic
I like old computer ads.

Angry Young Computer!


What A Bargain.


Dual Floppies. Uh Huh.

a reply to: jtrenthacker

I was liking the first season, but it started getting absurd after they started basically inventing everything from chat rooms,social media, online gaming, the first IBM clone. Basically anything that has to do with the internet or computers, these people invented it and all at once. I am like come on, I didn't happen like that.

So much for inflation! Quite humbling when you think what we can buy for next to nothing these days ....

a reply to: Krazysh0t

Yeah, I worked in the industry too. I actually built up some of the first Pentium motherboard circuitry prototypes, so I was very into it when these ads were made.

You're not a buzzkill. Not today, anyway.

a reply to: Benevolent Heretic

AH! I built some very basic circuit boards in one of my classes in college. Man, I thought tracing errors in programming was tedious. I was SOOOO wrong. Tracing circuits to find that ONE circuit that is connected to the ONE wrong socket is MUCH worse. I just had a flashback to that class... Yikes!

I had a friend who watched me build an "IBM clone" computer in 90-91. A 286 with a 100mb hard drive. He told me computers were a fad, and they would fade away like all other fads. Now, you'll have to pry that mouse from his cold dead hands.