C-64 vs the world (vintage flamebait) (was Re: Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers)

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Tue Apr 23 23:00:52 2002

Waidaminnute, waiddaminute ... Just because you couldn't buy an AMIGA clone
for cheap doesn't mean you can peg its cost to a BigBlue pricetag. I bought
the board separately from the box, used a mouse I already had, and bought the
VGA card (pretty pricey) from my ex business partner's retail store.

The year I got my first PC/AT (I used 'em at work all the time, but didn't get
one at home for a while.) I bought a 25 MHz clone (NEAT architecture) with 8
MB RAM and a pair of 700 MB ESDI drives for $1080. That was with a 1kx768x16
VGA display board. I hacked it to work with a fixed-frequency (sync-on-green)
monitor I had sitting around. It was WONDERFUL. That was in early '89.

more below ...

----- Original Message -----
From: "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2002 6:34 PM
Subject: Re: C-64 vs the world (vintage flamebait) (was Re: Micro$oft
Biz'droid Lusers)


> On Tue, 23 Apr 2002, Richard Erlacher wrote:
> > > > Now compare the cost of the 64 to a PC/AT at the time...
> > >
> > > More like the original PC - both came out about the same time - 1982.
> > > The C-64 was $595 (no disk), the original PC was $2880, 64KB of RAM
> > > and, also, no disk.
>
> 5150 with 16K RAM, no video (+$300 for CGA board) $1360?
> disk controller was another $300, ~$900 for IBM's CGA monitor (but CGA
> card would connect to composite video, AND had connector for SupRModII RF
> modulator)
>
I remember that, in '84, my partner and I were selling compete XT's using
gray-market boxes with motherboards and putting our own drives, using TEAC
FDD's and Fujitsu hard disks in 'em with a Western Digital controller and
selling the entire thing with 256KB of RAM for about $1500. Now, I had
connections with a local manufacturer that was using about 2880 of the 64K
drams per hour, so it wasn't difficult to get a "price" on them, and a friend
was at a local HDD specialty house, so when I couldn't get 'em cheaper
directly or from the west coast, I'd get 'em from him.

Nevertheless, we were only about $25 under most everybody else.

>
> > > The PC-AT came out several years later with a
> > > standard configuration price (including hard disk) of $5K.
> > >
> > August of '81, IIRC. I got my technical reference in March of '82.
> PC (5150) August 11, 1981
>
>
> > Compatibility? Could the PC easily read Commodore 64 diskettes?
>
> No. But LATER Commodore drives COULD do MFM, and therefore write stuff
> that the PC could read (with additional software)
>
>
Received on Tue Apr 23 2002 - 23:00:52 BST