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15 years later, 1000x more ram

L

LxMxFxD4

Senior member
My first computer in 1995 was a Pentium 1 90mhz with an 850MB HD and 8MB of ram.

It cost $2300.

Ram was $40 per megabyte.

Today due to my recent need to run some virtual machines of windows 2008 I installed some extra memory that pushed my system to 8GB total. Not a huge amount by today's standards but a milestone... for me.

Thought I'd share that with yall. *a tear*
 
Last edited:
21845.33333333333 x the ram in my first PC now (8GB vs 384K).

1987 - Tandy 1000 SX - 7.16MHz 8086 with 384K memory and 2 - 360K floppy drives (5-1/4"). $1607. I added a 20MB harddrive in 1988 for $379.

bamacre,

I know what you mean. I got in on the HP stuff a few years ago when they were paying you to take it (the PC5300 and PC6400 stuff). I should have bought the limit then....if only I would have known.
 
Whenever I see the little micro SDHC card in my blackberry, I think of the old 5.25" Quantum Bigfoot I had a long time ago. Slow, bigger than other drives, but it was pushing over two GIGABYTES(!!!) back in the day. Then again, before MP3's, 3d games, and video... computers just didn't need that much storage.
 
I used to sell RAM at Egghead software for $50 per meg in multiples of 4 with no discount! It is truly amazing! My new machine on Tuesday will have 6 GB!
 
pjkenned said:
Whenever I see the little micro SDHC card in my blackberry, I think of the old 5.25" Quantum Bigfoot I had a long time ago. Slow, bigger than other drives, but it was pushing over two GIGABYTES(!!!) back in the day. Then again, before MP3's, 3d games, and video... computers just didn't need that much storage.
Click to expand...

LOL, I know what you mean. I added a 30MB drive to the 20MB drive about two years later (on original PC) and remember stating that I would never fill it up. Those were the days! :laugh;
 
So by 2025, we'll have terabytes of RAM to work with. 🙂

Pretty incredible when you think about it. And you have to remember that the growth is exponential -- RAM capacity doubles every two years or so.
 
frostedflakes said:
So by 2025, we'll have terabytes of RAM to work with. 🙂

Pretty incredible when you think about it. And you have to remember that the growth is exponential -- RAM capacity doubles every two years or so.
Click to expand...

Current DRAM design has a physical limit to density.
 
Of course silicon has limits. Vacuum tubes had limits as well, which is why integrated circuits eventually replaced them, allowing for even greater computing power and storage. We'll develop new technologies before we reach the limits of silicon semiconductors. Transistors based on carbon nanotubes, for example, are one potential future technology. In the near future, companies are probably going to move to stacked/3D integrated circuits to extend Moore's law.

It's kind of interesting if you look at the growth in computing power and storage over the last century or so. It has grown at a pretty constant an exponential rate, despite the underlying technology used (starting out with mechanical relays, then vacuum tubes, then discrete transistors, and now integrated transistor circuits). We always develop something new before we reach the absolute limits of the current technology. 🙂
 
As I write this Im looking at the old Radio Shack ad for the Tandy 5000 MC Professional System (desktop) featuring: 20MHz Intel 80386 CPU; VGA Graphics; 2MB RAM (16MB Capacity).

This "New for 1989" Ad Hypes :
- 80386 Intel processor with lightning fast 20MHz and a memory cache controller for fast RAM access
- 32 bit wide data path for virtually simultaneous data transfers between peripherals
- 256,000 color VGA
- Operates MS-DOS 3.3, OS2, SCO, XENIX
- Serial & parallel ports & mouse included

Item No 25-6000

All yours for only $8499.00 !!!!! (before tax) and doesnt even mention anything concerning availability/provision for permanent data storage (dont see any floppy even)
 
C1 said:
As I write this Im looking at the old Radio Shack ad for the Tandy 5000 MC Professional System (desktop) featuring: 20MHz Intel 80386 CPU; VGA Graphics; 2MB RAM (16MB Capacity).

This "New for 1989" Ad Hypes :
- 80386 Intel processor with lightning fast 20MHz and a memory cache controller for fast RAM access
- 32 bit wide data path for virtually simultaneous data transfers between peripherals
- 256,000 color VGA
- Operates MS-DOS 3.3, OS2, SCO, XENIX
- Serial & parallel ports & mouse included

Item No 25-6000

All yours for only $8499.00 !!!!! (before tax) and doesnt even mention anything concerning availability/provision for permanent data storage (dont see any floppy even)
Click to expand...

I remember seeing my first 386 system around that time. I was amazed at the power of that PC. I went out and dumped a ton (relative at the time lol) of money on a 286 daughter card. Basically an ISA card that had a 286 chip and a ribbon cable on it. Plug it into the ISA port and then plug the cable into the CPU socket where the 8086 resided. Had to install a driver to actually make it work. Was about 1.5 to 3.0 times as fast as the 8086 that it replaced.
 
C1 said:
As I write this Im looking at the old Radio Shack ad for the Tandy 5000 MC Professional System (desktop) featuring: 20MHz Intel 80386 CPU; VGA Graphics; 2MB RAM (16MB Capacity).

This "New for 1989" Ad Hypes :
- 80386 Intel processor with lightning fast 20MHz and a memory cache controller for fast RAM access
- 32 bit wide data path for virtually simultaneous data transfers between peripherals
- 256,000 color VGA
- Operates MS-DOS 3.3, OS2, SCO, XENIX
- Serial & parallel ports & mouse included

Item No 25-6000

All yours for only $8499.00 !!!!! (before tax) and doesnt even mention anything concerning availability/provision for permanent data storage (dont see any floppy even)
Click to expand...

Heh in 95 (late 95 mind you) I remember a 17" monitor was $700. My uncle had one and I wooed at it every day. I went with the $400 15" CRT. Heh!
 
frostedflakes said:
So by 2025, we'll have terabytes of RAM to work with. 🙂

Pretty incredible when you think about it. And you have to remember that the growth is exponential -- RAM capacity doubles every two years or so.
Click to expand...


For a project I am working on at the office we are already thinking about buying servers with 1 TB of RAM. Yes, we do have an actual use for that much RAM.
 
when i started with 3D stuff, RAM was at a peak (1988) - $500 a MB.

my first workstation had 10 MB. it did industrial strength solid modelling (the kind you can bill clients for), running Xenix with a proprietary graphics card (that cost $4K). one of the systems was a 286, one was a Compaq Deskpro 386-20, then we had some intel systems.

odd thing is, i can't say today's 3D software is any better that that solid-modelling ap. it was named Aries & competed with Pro-E. bought by MacNeal Schwendler (makers of NASTRAN) and discontinued in about 2000 in favor of their other FEA software, PATRAN (which, the consensus in our engineering department in about 1997 was, sucked.)
 
There is another way to look at this as well. I remember talking to my older brother who pointed out that current processors have the same or more cache on die as you had in RAM back then and yet it costs the same or less. It is funny if you think of it in the sense of buying ram and getting a processor free.
In my case though I was just a little kid barely old enough to remember that we had a tandy of some sort and I remember when we got our 486.
 
I'm with all of you on this. I cleaned out my closet recently and tossed out about $2,000 worth of 72 pin SIMMS. Back in the mid 90's I thought I had found a steal deal when bought mine for under $40 a meg.

If using 1990's prices today I would have $560,000 in RAM. 😱 The hell of it is I will need to replace all of it when I do my next round of upgrades.
 
Engineer said:
bamacre,

I know what you mean. I got in on the HP stuff a few years ago when they were paying you to take it (the PC5300 and PC6400 stuff). I should have bought the limit then....if only I would have known.
Click to expand...

I didn't bother with the HP deals because, IIRC, they were all 1GB dimm's, and I was maxing out systems with 2GB modules...
http://www.benmacre.com/mt/images/stt64gb.jpg

And even some 4GB modules I picked up for a whopping $45 a pop...
http://www.benmacre.com/mt/images/ae4gbs.jpg

:biggrin::biggrin::biggrin:
 
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