Hey "old heads", do you remember this?

OK, I guess you are just a young kid! And YEAH, for use, You could even consider this the THIRD generation! In a way, there was.....

1. The ALTAIR! A computer where you had to do nearly everything.
2. The Cosmac ELF! A computer where you had a cheap bios and hex keyboard,
3. The apple which was all included.

The one advertised here was a very expandable on using all the standards in the book. It may actually be worth more than a used IBM PC today. ALSO, this was likely from about 1975. That was BEFORE apple really got a foothold, and the S-100 started to go south. Printers cost more, ESPECIALLY 132 char ones,

And that is a MONITOR! LCDs didn't come out until about that time, and were SMALL! It was like 5 years before they got larger. It was even LONGER before they were color. And LONGER before they were CHEAP!

BTW MOST of the leaders back then are GONE now! Some grew. Some were sold. Some DID go out of business. Even APPLE DISAPPEARED! It became the MACINTOSH which changed in every respect, right down to how it was sold.

What if it had died because they simply failed? Microcomputers wouldn't exist today!!!!

BTW the processor in that IMSAI? The 8080! It was made by a little company called intel! The 8080->8086->8088->80286->80386->80486->PENTIUM->etc...

And CPM? A company made a knockoff cpm 86->PC DOS->M/S DOS->WINDOWS->WINDOWS NT->ETC...

Even dot matrix, all the printers today work the same basic way.

Steve

My first proper work computer was quite a bit later (and quite a lot cheaper) than that - a 486 25mhz but there was a button to 'turbo' it to the dizzying speeds of 50mhz.

Easy, New Guy. That's just Steve being Steve. Sarcasm is invisible to him. He's The OT's version of Sheldon Cooper.

(I mean that in the best way possible, Steve.)

It says in the ad "12 inch monitor". It was probably monochrome.

And CPM operating system...Talk about Top Of The Line!

PS: When the thread title said "old heads" I was expecting to see Mr Natural or some psychedelic posters or rolling papers or something like that.

LOL - I like the *ONLY $5995*

In 2011, the relative value of $5,995.00 from 1975 ranges from $20,200.00 to $55,300.00*

*According to http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/, it is approx. $25,900...

In 1981 (I was 17) I knew one person with a computer - a Commodore Vic 20. Don't remember what he paid but he saved for a long time for it. Compared to today, you could barely do anything - but we spent hours on it anyway...

Now, I have 7 laptops and 2 desktops in my house and I spent less than $5995.

Times change...

What exactly could you do on that computer I wonder?

We thought we were in fat city when we got amber monitors instead of green.

I worked in a car dealership in early 80s; it was a department-level debate whether to buy a 10MB hard disk or fork over the extra $300 for 20MB...

Commodore 64 was the cat's meow at the time because it had a programmable sound chip. You had to learn what made up a musical note - I still remember - attack, sustain, decay, release. It took HOURS to program a primitive song. Which you usually had to do twice because the cassette tape that you stored the program on got erased by the sister who was recording Madonna songs by holding her little cassette recorder up against the stereo speaker - which was playing music from an AM radio station.

Yes, times are different. Siblings aren't, though. Now they just swipe your 4GB micro-SD card and record over your stuff with their phone.

And how can all you experts tell the person that is making fun from the kid that is seriously laughing?

HEY, some people really DO wonder why the CRT displays are so cheap.

Steve