Perspectives, Then vs. Now

[NoelC]

I thought it might be fun to compare some high tech then vs. now stories...

 

--

 

Computers:

 

I remember, for example, in 1987 at the company I worked at getting a $10,000 Dell 25 MHz 80386 system running Windows 3.1 for Workgroups and sporting 16 Megabytes of RAM with which to do system builds.  Suddenly we could compile 50K lines of C code in under 30 minutes!  And it would almost always finish without failure, as long as you ran only one build at a time.  Sometimes you could get away with doing two, in separate DOS windows, but it took nearly twice as long so we usually didn't try.  Productivity across the engineering group shot through the roof as we could actually build product software for testing several times a day.

 

My last full software build on my current Dell Precision workstation with 12 cores at 3.47 GHz and 48 GB of RAM, here on my desk, running Windows 8.1 x64...  100 KLOC in...  Well, see for yourself:

 

1>Build succeeded.
1>
1>Time Elapsed 00:00:07.42
========== Rebuild All: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========

 

That's 7 seconds.

 

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Digital cameras:

 

My first digital camera in 1997 cost near a thousand bucks and made amazing digital photos right out of the box - no film needed!  At 1024 x 768 pixels (almost a whole megapixel), it stored a hundred JPEGs on a single 16 megabyte flash card.  If you held the shutter button down you could shoot almost a frame a second.  Light sensitivity was ISO 200.

 

A current digital SLR today that costs near a thousand bucks makes 20 megapixel photos, shoots 7 still frames a second and will capture HD video, and stores thousands of raw files, each of which is near 16 megabytes in size, on a 32 gigabyte flash card, and can tag photos with your GPS location.  Daytime images are noiseless and night shooting is practical at up to ISO 25600.

 

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Cars:

 

My 1982 Corvette was one of the first to feature digital fuel injection.  Beyond taking it apart, modifying parts, and bolting on new parts, I used to tweak it by burning new timing and fuel tables into a UV-erasable EPROM that carried a whopping 2K bytes of data.  The ECM (electronic control module) was a 10 x 8 x 2 inch box that sat in the battery compartment and did a passable job of fuel and timing management.  The mechanical speedo read to 175 (not that I had the gumption to go that fast) and I used to calculate fuel mileage in my head whenever I'd fill up.

 

The other day my Dodge Journey informed me that its left-front wheel speed sensor had a malfunction, which limited the effectiveness of its traction control system, its antilock brake system, its all wheel drive power distribution system, the cruise control, and a few other systems.  Besides reading out the speed and RPM, the dash shows me the outside temperature, compass heading, time on the engine, trip mileage, and a few dozen other things.  It also reads out the ongoing fuel mileage digitally, so I can adjust my driving habits to maximize economy.  And that's not even mentioning the touch screen entertainment and information system.

 

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Got any perspectives on then vs. now you'd like to share?

 

This could be fun.

 

-Noel
 

[osRe]

In DOS, on a 20MHz 286 with 4MB RAM, performance was completely predictable. Everything other than diskette/disk access responded immediately. There were never unexpected pauses.

Now, on Windows, on a 2.5-3.1GHz i5 with 8GB RAM, I have to wait 30+ seconds *after* waking up from hibernation until disk access settles down and the computer becomes responsive. Opening the task manager with Ctrl-Shift-Esc sometimes takes 20+ seconds. Software gets temporarily stuck for no apparent reason. Video playback stutters occasionally, until a restart (I think).

In DOS, software stored configuration in its directory. I could copy the config files based on date, and I'm set.

Now, on Windows, software stores configuration everywhere. HKCU, HKLM, %APPDATA%, %LOCALAPPDATA%, %PROGRAMDATA%, just throws it in %HOMEPATH%, or maybe %HOMEPATH%\My Documents. Some still have it in the program directory, exclusively, or in addition to one or more of the above. The config files are intermixed with data files and temp files just to spice it up. There's no standard way to backup or restore settings.

In DOS, on startup you'd get lines spouted out to indicate what's happening as you wait.

Now, on Windows, half the startup time you stare at a black screen. Maybe with a mouse pointer, if you happened to move it.

But not all is bad. Now computers are cheaper, and we have the web, VMs, internet shopping from China, GTX 760 rather than 8900CL, Google rather than archie, Miranda rather than talk, and square pixels.

PS: Windows 3 in 1987? You had a time machine!

Edited June 9, 2014 by shae

[jaclaz]

Digital cameras:

 

My first digital camera in 1997 cost near a thousand bucks and made amazing digital photos right out of the box - no film needed!  At 1024 x 768 pixels (almost a whole megapixel), it stored a hundred JPEGs on a single 16 megabyte flash card.  If you held the shutter button down you could shoot almost a frame a second.  Light sensitivity was ISO 200.

 

A current digital SLR today that costs near a thousand bucks makes 20 megapixel photos, shoots 7 still frames a second and will capture HD video, and stores thousands of raw files, each of which is near 16 megabytes in size, on a 32 gigabyte flash card, and can tag photos with your GPS location.  Daytime images are noiseless and night shooting is practical at up to ISO 25600.

 

It depends.

In 1997 I could blame the stupid camera for the poor quality of the pictures, now they suck as well (at a higher resolution, though ) and I have no excuses ...

 

jaclaz

[TELVM]

The same ramdisk software runnig on machines of diverse ages    :

 

^ ~1999

^ ~2001

^ ~2003

^ ~2010

[vinifera]

all I remember is win98 flying on 128 MB RAM and 550 MHz Pentium (think it was P2)

now you need god **** more than 4000 MB RAM and at least 2 x 2600 to 3000 MHz

[NoelC]

PS: Windows 3 in 1987? You had a time machine!

 

You're right.  Thinking back, we ran DOS on it at first; it was a good while later that we put Windows on it.  I'd remembered only the later years.  I do remember configuring SMARTDRV to kick performance up.

 

And we moved up to DecNET networking back then with a blazing fast 10 megabit coax.  It was often better than using sneakernet and diskettes.  Good times.

 

-Noel

Edited June 10, 2014 by NoelC

[JorgeA]

I may have told this anecdote somewhere on the Forum, so if that's the case please forgive me, but here goes anyway:

 

Back about 1985, my father and I each had our own Sanyo MBC-550, outfitted with two double-sided, double-density, 360K 5.25-inch floppy disk drives. I remember the two of us browsing at a computer store at the mall one night. They had boxes of 10 diskettes hanging off a rack on the wall. My father turned to me and said (not in this language; translated  ) , "What am I ever going to need ten of these for???"

 

And I smiled at him... in agreement.

 

--JorgeA

 

[TELVM]

Warning! Don't try to calculate the cost per GB at home    :
 

 

 

[vinifera]

ouch to above

[JorgeA]

Wow, I didn't know HDDs even existed at all in the '70s. That was before my time. 

 

--JorgeA

[jaclaz]

Just to make things worse :

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/142911-ibm-3390-the-worlds-largest-and-most-expensive-hard-drive-teardown

of course that is not at all "the most expensive", hard disks date back to the '50's.

The oldest I could find a price reference for is however the IBM 1301:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM_magnetic_disk_drives#IBM_1301

The IBM 1301 Model 1 leased for $2,100 per month or could be purchased for $115,500. Prices for the Model 2 were $3,500 per month or $185,000 to purchase. The IBM 7631 controller cost an additional $1,185 per month or $56,000 to purchase.

 

A hard disk model 2 + it's controller for around US$ 250,000 in 1961! 

 

According to:

http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/

this means : :

In 2013, the relative value of $250,000.00 from 1961 ranges from $1,500,000.00 to $7,450,000.00.

 

 

jaclaz

Edited June 10, 2014 by jaclaz

[osRe]

They had boxes of 10 diskettes hanging off a rack on the wall. My father turned to me and said (not in this language; translated  ) , "What am I ever going to need ten of these for???"

If only you knew that a few years later all of them would be needed for Hero's Quest.

[TELVM]

... "What am I ever going to need ten of these for???" ...

 

Happens in the best of families.   

 

[NoelC]

I used to sell these at a computer store in about 1978 or 1979...  Too bad I wasn't working on commission.

 

http://www.vintagecomputing.com/wp-content/images/retroscan/corvus_apple_large.jpg

 

The ones I sold looked like the one in the image but were 5 MB and commanded a bit over $5,000.00.  And it was bigger than the Apple II base unit itself.  Remember when the Disk Operating System on an Apple II used the same RAM as the graphics memory?  You could either have disk access or graphics.  Just not at the same time.

 

But alas, that was amazing small consumer technology...  I worked with mainframes when rooms full of washing machine-sized disk drives running from 480V 3-phase power were needed to do REAL data processing.

 

 

Now we have: 

 

 

-Noel

Edited June 10, 2014 by NoelC

[NoelC]

A bit before my time, but this was the typical construction of a commercial electronic product (an AM table radio) about 70 years ago...

 

 

 

That just did AM radio reception.

 

Today we have stuff like...

 

 

This chip does:

 

• Wide range of ferrite loop sticks and air loop antennas supported
• Worldwide FM band support (64–108 MHz)
• Worldwide AM band support (520–1710 kHz)
• SW band support (2.3–26.1 MHz)
• LW band support (153–279 kHz)
• Advanced AM/FM seek tuning
• Automatic frequency control (AFC) and gain control (AGC)
• AM/FM/SW/LW digital tuning with digital FM stereo decoder
• Programmable de-emphasis
• Multiplexed stereo audio AUXIN
• ADC with 85 dB dynamic range
• Seven selectable AM channel filters
• Programmable reference clock
• Adjustable soft mute control
• RDS/RBDS processor
• 2-wire and 3-wire control interface
• Integrated LDO regulator
• EN55020 compliant
• Digital audio out
• Integrated VCO

-Noel