Danny Sauer wrote:
Allen wrote regarding 'Re: [SLE] new v9.2 is out' on Wed, Oct 13 at 23:00:
On Wed, Oct 13, 2004 at 09:26:07PM -0400, James Knott wrote:
I bought my first computer, an IMSAI 8080, in Nov. 1976. This was a
I was born in Nov, 1976. :) You had it easy - do you know how hard I've had to look to find Heathkit stuff, decades after they stopped making anything? And here, you could just go to a store or mail-order parts!
You can still get parts, but there's not much call for kits, because comptuer hardware is so cheap. Back when I bought that IMSAI, 4K (that's right, K not M) of memory was about $200. The big problem back then, was simply finding things. For example, closed circuit "security" monitors were frequently used as displays. The first keyboard kits had appeared, but surplus stuff was still commonly used. My first printer, was a model 35 ASR Teletype, which included printer, keyboard and paper tape punch & reader. It ran at 10 chars/sec and was about the size of a small desk. I paid my employer $150 for it, though new they ran a few thousand dollars.