Buying a new computer

[Mike Painter]

I've pretty much decided to go with the fastest processor and the most RAM
I can get in, also with a large hard drive.
My real question is the modem.
Internal or external modem? (There's a pretty big price difference.)
Is high speed worth the difference?

I came across my January 1988 copy of Byte last night.
The fastest processor was the 386.
2 Mb of RAM.
40 Mb hard drive - $459.00 (I paid $2500.00 for 5 Mb a few years earlier.)
The modem was 179 internal or 239 external for 2400 baud.

But I'm still looking for old Bytes. Back in the day when a new 64k CP/M
machine cost $4,000.00 and one that was used ( burned in for 48 hours or
more) was $5,000.00

 

[Don Phillipson]

I came across my January 1988 copy of Byte last night. . . .
But I'm still looking for old Bytes. Back in the day when a new 64k CP/M
machine cost $4,000.00 and one that was used ( burned in for 48 hours or
more) was $5,000.00

You may have to look earlier than the first Byte. In 1983 64k CP/M
machines cost $2,000 (including free software suites for Kaypro and
Osborne.)

 

[Paul]

My real question is the modem.
Internal or external modem? (There's a pretty big price difference.)
Is high speed worth the difference?

Are you discussing dialup networking in the above statement ?
Dialup has been stuck at 56K for some time. Virtually any modem
is going to offer you the same 5KB/sec practical download speed on a
dialup line.

Modem choices include internal or external, Winmodem or with separate
data pump. In some tests I conducted on a relative's computer, it
turned out that the Winmodem was every bit as good as the
modem with a data pump (which makes a big difference in
price). Your new computer will not be constrained by CPU performance,
so if the modem is dependent on DSP code to do the modem operations,
you won't even notice.

The most important decision in buying a Winmodem, is the quality of
the driver. Try to find reviews that indicate whether the included
driver is any good or not. Most of the value of a Winmodem is in
the CD that accompanies it - if you see a Winmodem for sale that is
"white box" or "OEM", the CD may not be included. In some cases,
it can be pretty difficult, to dig up the right driver, when
buying such an item. So ensuring it comes with a driver or that
a driver is available, is part of your pre-purchase decision.

With the bloat in software, drivers, and media content, a dialup
modem is hardly practical. In rural areas, if all else fails, perhaps
a satellite service (with limited download cap), will at least
give decent speeds when downloading necessary items. If you wanted
to "watch TV" over the Internet, and you live in a rural area,
there may not be any option which is cost effective at doing that.

Paul

 

[TomT]

I've pretty much decided to go with the fastest processor and the most RAM
I can get in, also with a large hard drive.
My real question is the modem.
Internal or external modem? (There's a pretty big price difference.)

Mike - If you ever want to expand your horizon beyond Windows, do NOT
buy a winmodem.

I don't think it makes much difference between internal or external.
(Winmodems are internal BTW.)

TomT

 

[Mike Painter]

You may have to look earlier than the first Byte. In 1983 64k CP/M
machines cost $2,000 (including free software suites for Kaypro and
Osborne.)

Byte started in 1975 and in 1978, a few months before the First Radio Shack
hit the streets, a friend built a 64k machine with an ASR-33 for I/O. It
cost him about $12,000.00 for the kit. He soldered every socket and chip on
the board.

I had about $2500.00 into my Radio Shack Model one by the time I bought my
first Osborne, which was right after they started bundling dBase II with it.

The industry, such as it was, had been saying for a couple years that
economy of scale would allow the type of price drop that happened when
Tandy, PET and Apple hit the market.

 

[Mike Painter]

Mike - If you ever want to expand your horizon beyond Windows, do NOT
buy a winmodem.

I don't think it makes much difference between internal or external.
(Winmodems are internal BTW.)

TomT

Ummm, did you notice I mentioned a 2400 baud modem costing over $200.00 as
the high speed choice?
Or that the prices came from my copy of a 21 year old magazine, Byte,
Janyary 1988.

 

[Flasherly]

Ummm, did you notice I mentioned a 2400 baud modem costing over $200.00 as
the high speed choice?
Or that the prices came from my copy of a 21 year old magazine, Byte,
Janyary 1988.

First pre-US Robotics Hayes I saw, 1200, was being sold $200 used by a
member at a computer meeting. 300BAUD direct-coupled acoustical being
the next step down. Internal PCI slotted, ported USB or parallel
external, Win or not to Win, Diamond Supra or a Zoom. The arrays are
blinding.

-
Robot > [Czechoslovakian, lit. translation:] Time to get your lazy
asses in gear and unite, worthless idlers, and goto work for the
greater glory of solidarity.

 

[Mike Painter]

Right now I'm looking at the July '77 issue, and on pages 22 - 24
they're introducing the Apple II. Starting at $1298.00 with 4K, up to
$2638.00 with 48K. Additional RAM available at $600 per 16K.

Here's another one:
Digital Research CP/M System Diskette and complete set of 6
manuals for $70.00.

Check the small back page ads for CP/M systems.
Remember that $70.00 for an OS was a good chunk of change back then.

 

[Mike Painter]

But at least you generally got full documentation. Now you get a
.pdf file if you're lucky, and some documentation will cost a pack
of paper and a good chunk of a toner cartridge.

There is far more documentation in the Windows help file then there ever was
in a CP/M manual, not that it wasn't covered completely as it was basically
a simple version of DOS. The need for the additional manuals would have come
because no two CP/M systems were exactly the same.
Drivers for all but the most common devices were non- existent and it was
common to have to write assembly language routines for printers or any other
attached devices.
There were over 200 different floppy disk formats and more than 20 common
ways to write to the screen. You bought a monitor and if you were lucky
could write ASCII text to it with one of those methods. If not, assembly
language. I once spent over two hours trying to get a program to run on an
Osborne before calling (guess who? MSFT) and finding out it would not run on
an Osborne.

You could have two computers from the same company with almost identical
model numbers and *never* be able to use a 5.25 floppy from one in the other
one. Hard sector disks had ten holes and soft sectored had one. (And apple
to save money, had none.)

 

[Michael Black]

Right now I'm looking at the July '77 issue, and on pages 22 - 24
they're introducing the Apple II. Starting at $1298.00 with 4K, up to
$2638.00 with 48K. Additional RAM available at $600 per 16K.

And that was just the RAM. Usually, you had to buy whole boards to
expand your computer, so you were paying not just for more RAM, but
the board. I have a Processor Technology board, from '77 or maybe
'76, and it's all of 16K and when I checked an ad some years back,
it was at least $500 for the board (and likely using lower density
RAM). If you wanted another 16K, you had to buy another board.

That was one of the innovative things about the Apple II, it had
the empty sockets so you could upgrade to more RAM by just inserting
RAM into the sockets. At least until you hit the 48K mark, at
which point you did need another board.

The Altair 8800 was relatively cheap (and about the same or even
slightly less than buying a single 8080 CPU at the time of its release at
the end of 1974/early 1975), but of course, it had something like
256bytes of RAM and no I/O. Just a CPU board and the hardware for
the front panel, which you needed since there was no other I/O and
no monitor in ROM. It was the RAM boards and the serial board for
the Teletype machine (or if you were lucky the non-mechanical terminal)
or later a video board, and eventually a disk controller board and
external floppy drives that raised the price significantly. And
that was the state for virtually all the computers (except single
boards that were even harder to expand) until 1977 when the Apple
and the other more consumer-oriented computers arrived.

In May it will be 30 years since I got my first computer, and I
was late at that, since I knew about Byte before it started publishing.
But I couldn't afford a computer, and even building had problems like
how do you get something going if you don't have anything to learn
about programming on to get the system going? I was lucky, someone
had a KIM-1 that they'd gotten as part of a course and they didn't
want it, so I got it in May of 1979. All of 1K of RAM, a serial port
but I had nothing to hook up to it, so I used the 7segment readouts
and calculator style keyboard.

Kids today don't know how lucky they are when it comes to computers.

Michael

 

[Ed Medlin]

Byte started in 1975 and in 1978, a few months before the First Radio
Shack hit the streets, a friend built a 64k machine with an ASR-33 for
I/O. It cost him about $12,000.00 for the kit. He soldered every socket
and chip on the board.

hehe......That TTY would have cost much more than half the price of the
entire system with the dialer and data-set installed if bought new.......
By 1978, the Mod 33 ASR was getting a bit long in the tooth with the Mod 40
ready to release, but he may have gotten a deal on a used one. Lots of folks
used the IBM Selectric I/O terminals then too but they were more common on
dedicated lines rather than dialup. For a home user, there just wasn't any
cheap, easy to maintain I/O soulution in the mid '70s.

Ed

 

[Mike Painter]

hehe......That TTY would have cost much more than half the price of
the entire system with the dialer and data-set installed if bought
new....... By 1978, the Mod 33 ASR was getting a bit long in the
tooth with the Mod 40 ready to release, but he may have gotten a deal
on a used one. Lots of folks used the IBM Selectric I/O terminals
then too but they were more common on dedicated lines rather than
dialup. For a home user, there just wasn't any cheap, easy to
maintain I/O soulution in the mid '70s.

They were common and a lot less expensive than something like the IBM found
on the first computer I used in 62. They were "worn out" so would only
last another 10 years or so based on the output from most machines then.
That was even if you played luner lander or star trek on them.

 

[The Seabat]

Well, for one, I didn't. Just where exactly is that stated in the OP?
Tom gave you very good advise, considering the limited bit of info you
supplied us with. You asked about an external or internal modem. That
was your "real" question and then you went off on a nostalgia tangent
that had nothing to do with the question/answer. Or are you planning
on building this machine out of antique parts?

Cable/DSL modems, AFAIK, are not internal, so that pretty much limits
it to a dialup modem. Again, Tom is right, in that you are limited to
53K max (by law) on dialup.

Maybe you're talking about a NIC card?

Time to proceed into the 21st century, dude.

 

[Mike Painter]

Well, for one, I didn't. Just where exactly is that stated in the OP?
Tom gave you very good advise, considering the limited bit of info you
supplied us with. You asked about an external or internal modem. That
was your "real" question and then you went off on a nostalgia tangent
that had nothing to do with the question/answer. Or are you planning
on building this machine out of antique parts?

Cable/DSL modems, AFAIK, are not internal, so that pretty much limits
it to a dialup modem. Again, Tom is right, in that you are limited to
53K max (by law) on dialup.

Maybe you're talking about a NIC card?

Time to proceed into the 21st century, dude.

"I came across my January 1988 copy of Byte last night.
The fastest processor was the 386.
2 Mb of RAM.
40 Mb hard drive - $459.00 (I paid $2500.00 for 5 Mb a few years earlier.)
The modem was 179 internal or 239 external for 2400 baud. "

Sorry for your confusion, most seem to have got it.

 

[The Seabat]

Well, I see the 2400 baud mentioned, but not the $200 or 'high speed'.
And again, what does that have to do with your "real" question of a
new modem? Or it's speed?

 

[Mike Painter]

Well, I see the 2400 baud mentioned, but not the $200 or 'high speed'.
And again, what does that have to do with your "real" question of a
new modem? Or it's speed?

Again I apologise, most people managed to figure out what I wa doing and
realized that my "real" question. Perhaps you should read the original again
and see if it makes sense to you now.

 

[The Seabat]

Nope, still a garbled irrelevant post of minutia. And why should we
have to figure out what you are doing, anyway? Is this some kind of
test or game?

So what about the high speed? Did you get it? What brand of high speed
did you end up installing? Is it that much faster than the other slow
speed thingie? Was it worth the extra cost? Just how much faster is
the high than the low? Huh?

 

[Mike Painter]

Nope, still a garbled irrelevant post of minutia. And why should we
have to figure out what you are doing, anyway? Is this some kind of
test or game?

So what about the high speed? Did you get it? What brand of high speed
did you end up installing? Is it that much faster than the other slow
speed thingie? Was it worth the extra cost? Just how much faster is
the high than the low? Huh?

Sorry that you don't seem to be able to comprehend what went on.
Sorry that you don't even seem to realize that these "sorrys" are about as
serious as the intitial post.

Had it been a test you would have failed both the test and the makeup.
As for your high verses low question usually 2400 is considered to be twice
1200 but again, that was a test question.

 

[TomT]

Plonk.

 

[Ed Medlin]

They were common and a lot less expensive than something like the IBM
found on the first computer I used in 62. They were "worn out" so would
only last another 10 years or so based on the output from most machines
then.
That was even if you played luner lander or star trek on them.

Yea....Teletype Corp manufactured the Model 32/33 family TTYs as "budget"
units priced well under their heavy duty Mod 28 ASRs. I still had some 33s I
installed with systems in '72 still working fine after 10yrs with good
maintainance. Most of them outlasted Teletype Corp....... I worked on
every TTY from the Mod 15/19s up until the Mod 40s and was really glad to
see them go although they would outlast about anything. They outlasted the
company I worked for too.....RCA DSS.......


Ed