[AT] Slightly OT Tractors and technology

[David Bruce]

An example of Moore's law with the improvement in computer capabilities 
and the reduction in cost.
My first was a Tandy TRS-80 model III with a cassette (not even floppy 
drives - the 5.25 " type). Later I moved the 2 disk drive model with 64K 
of RAM. Cost about $2600.  Seems like for years a replacement computer 
cost about $2600 in those dollars.

These days I'm researching a replacement desktop for this Win XP system. 
When I add all the goodies I want guess what? About $2600 dollars. Guess 
my wants have outgrown my budget.

David
NW NC
On 7/1/2014 9:53 AM, Stephen Offiler wrote:
> That's beyond amazing.  Just mind-boggling.
>
> First computer I owned was a genuine IBM PC, the first model that replaced
> the 8088 with the 80286 processor. This was in the mid 1980's, probably
> just shy of 30 years ago. It had a 30 megabyte hard drive.  It ran DOS.  It
> cost $3000 ($6600 in today's dollars).  It's a long story, but a friend who
> was starting a small business purchased it (for tax writeoff purposes) and
> I did work for him to pay it off.  I am thinking that hard drive, in very
> rough numbers, must have been worth about $500 ($1100 in today's dollars).
>   Charlie could buy 16 of those 1.5T drives for $1100.  24 terabytes versus
> 30 megabytes!!!
>
> 24T is 2.639E13 bytes
>
> 30M is 3.146E7 bytes.
>
> Dividing, you get a factor of about 839,000 times more capacity for the
> buck!
>
> Viewed in terms of Moore's Law:  839,000 is 2 raised to a factor of 20
> (pretty darn close anyway)... in other words, it has doubled 20 times in 30
> years.  That's an average of once every 18 months.  That is EXACTLY what
> Moore's Law states!  Fascinating stuff!
>
> -SO
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 10:31 PM, charlie hill <charliehill at embarqmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Correction.  I just looked at my online banking and that 1.5 TB drive
>> was $69.00 with free shipping.
>>
>> Charlie
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: charlie hill
>> Sent: Monday, June 30, 2014 10:19 PM
>> To: Antique tractor email discussion group
>> Subject: [AT] Slightly OT Tractors and technology
>>
>> I remember when I first learned of this group
>> when Spencer was running it out of the Forsythe County
>> servers.   I think I was running a 286 computer
>> with Win. 3.1.  If I remember right it just had a few megabytes
>> of memory.  About a month ago I upgraded my Android
>> phone to a model that has 32 gigabytes of memory,  That
>> phone cost less money than that old 286 computer by about half
>> and it was used when I bought it.
>>
>> Then last week I saw a deal online and ordered it.  It came today
>> and I just installed it.  A 1.5 TB  Western Digital external hard drive.
>> It's about as bit as a deck of playing cards and it cost me a whopping
>> $89 bucks with free shipping.
>>
>> Meanwhile the price of old tractors continues to go up and new
>> tractors have gone out of sight.
>>
>>
>>
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