Computer memory and storage

[Thumpalumpacus]

I can remember when 4000 bytes was an enormous amount of storage.

Later on in the mid/late 80s the boss bought our department a 40 megabyte external drive for our shared computer, it was like the Gods had bestowed a blessing upon us.

Hell, Windows probably wastes/loses/corrupts/despoils 40 megabytes or more every time a computer boots up these days.

Sophomore year in HS, 1982. Computer "lab" was equipped wih Commodore PETs -- 4K RAM, no HD at all, aand I/O was a cassette-drive -- took five minutes to load that 4k BASIC program you'd been working on, and five minute to save your debug -- in a fifty-minute class..



My first personal was a C-64 -- knew the hardwired programming language, easy money. Able to PEEK and POKE? I could write some stuff!

My first PC, three years later, was a 286, with twin-40HDs, 12 Mhz clock-speed (with the "turbo" button pressed in!) ... and an amber display, until I upgraded to VGA, with (iirc) 16 colors. DOS was a big curve, but with Norton's guide, it wasn't that bad.

The phone I carry in my pocket could kill any assortment of fifty of those computers, and still do everything it's designed to do -- take and make calls, take and store photos, record every text I've made over the last six months, etc.