You, 'bear,' need to go back and reread what you've previously written. The
25MHz NEAT clone I bought in '89 was a '286, which, as I explained, was chosen
because it was slightly faster than the much more costly '386's of the time,
but cost MUCH less. It was, by the way, acquired through an ad in the
Computer Shopper, which I followed closely when I was shopping for a "deal"
since they didn't have an eBay yet.
I often found decent prices in Computer Shopper, and seldom even bothered to
read BYTE, which Will Jennings, who got the old BYTE and other mags from my
basement, will support, since I didn't read it much after '83-'84 by which
time the articles were mainly unpaid advertising for one product or another
and the prices from their advertisers reflected the high cost of the ads.
more below ...
If you've got a format at which everyone has arrived after much discussion,
I'd like to be informed as to what it is, provided that everyone else is in
agreement. I've seen several versions, and tried them all. They seem, all of
them, to illicit about the same amount of complaint.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "Glen Goodwin" <acme_ent_at_bellsouth.net>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Saturday, April 27, 2002 11:47 PM
Subject: BS al a Erlacher
> > From: r. 'bear' stricklin <red_at_bears.org>
>
> > On Tue, 23 Apr 2002, Richard Erlacher wrote:
>
> > > 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.
>
> ['bear' replied:]
>
> > This struck me as being blatantly wrong, since it seemed to me (if I
> > recalled) that in early 1989 your 8 MB of RAM would've run nearly $1k by
> > itself.
>
> > So I checked the January 1990 issue of "Byte". These are directly from
> the
> > cheap ads at the back, and representative of prices a year (loosely)
> > after your conjectured purchase date:
>
Ads from sellers willing to advertise in BYTE were seldom "cheap" enough to be
interesting. If you bought from those vendors, you got what you deserved, as
is borne out by the prices you've listed.
> [snip prices]
>
> > I admit some margin of error is to be expected, but these
> prices---sampled
> > fully eight or nine months after your stated date---do not come close to
> > corroborating your statements. In consideration of this, I must humbly
> > submit that you are totally full of shit, or at the very least have made
> > a grave typographical error.
>
> From my files, an invoice from 1990:
>
> 25 MHz 80386, motherboard, case, power supply, 4MB RAM, 1.44 MB FDD, 100MB
READ IT AGAIN, only LOOK FOR a '286/25, which is what I bought.
> HD, no i/o, no video, no modem
I didn't list a modem either since I had external modems, and since they
didn't matter much back then.
> $1450, which is exactly in line with the prices you quoted.
>
> Ah, but we must remember that Richard buys Windows for $2. He never pays
> what we have to pay, nor does he stoop to using bullshit systems like we do
> (Apple, C64, Unix, Amiga).
>
and it was their COST, among other things, that led me to avoid them.
You could buy cheap software too, if you were willing to get out there and
look.
>
> Richard Erlacher is simply a troll. Or an Alzheimer's victim. Or both.
> Yes, he has some "stuff" which he will sometimes share, but it's hardly
> worth the amount of crap we put up with here, not to mention that his
> crappy posts are deliberately formatted in a way which most classiccmpers
> find hard to read.
>
Now, if you'd tell me PRECISELY how to format my posts to meet the spec's for
this list, I'd happily conform.
The reason I got onto this list was that I wanted to give away a bunch of
hardware to anyone who was willing to pay the cost of getting it shipped. I
needed the space. I had lots of folks willing to let me pack it (ALL of it,
no preferences for anything) at my expense and ship it to them on the
off-chance they'd be willing to reimburse me for my costs. One guy, Sellam
Ismail, even wanted me to palletize it for him and haul it to the shipper of
his choice, some 40 miles away. Later, when I agreed to purchase a 2-box
Altos computer system for him for just a few bucks, he backed out of the deal
after I'd laid out the dough. That convinced me that dealing with him in any
way was a bad idea. I ended up giving those two boxes to Will Jennings just
to get 'em out of here, but not until after I had discarded the vast majority
of what I was offering.
I'm not a collector, and I have little use for hardware that can't do useful
work other machines I have can't do, or at least can't do more conveniently.
There are a very few exceptions.
I've gotten considerable amusement, some useful information, and even a little
hardware/software that was of considerable value from my 3-4 years hanging on
this list. I can't explain why I remember things that you, 'bear,' don't,
except perhaps in that I had the information and you didn't. I don't always
read the posts on the list as thoroughly and completely as I should, before
reacting, and it's clear I'm not alone in that.
>
> > As for the rest of you honking geese
>
> Just a minute here! Some of my best friends are geese!
>
> http://members.aol.com/gusggoose
>
> Glen
> 0/0
>
>
Received on Sun Apr 28 2002 - 12:18:20 BST