Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!e260-4f.berkeley.edu!c60a-1bq From: c60a-1bq@e260-4f.berkeley.edu (nunnayourbiznezz) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: popular computer affordability (was: Re: Another Leary thing ) Message-ID: <14292@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: 14 Sep 88 21:50:03 GMT References: <14033@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <319@flatline.UUCP> <14185@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <2624@sugar.uu.net> Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU Distribution: na Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 31 In article <2624@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >In article <14185@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, c60a-1bq@e260-4g.berkeley.edu (nunnayourbiznezz) writes: > >They have. I bought my second Atari 800 (an 800XL) for $64. The newer 800s >are a bit more expensive but they're still in the $100 range. Commodore >makes small computers in the same price range, too. > >Yes, they're not big machines. They have no hard drive and only 64K of RAM. >But they're quite affordable... in the price range of telephones. [much deleted] >-- > Peter da Silva `-_-' peter@sugar.uu.net > Have you hugged U your wolf today? My phone cost me $5 :-) True, there are the Atari 800 and C= 64. Both are solid, cheap machines, but you need more than a console to work. say $80 for the console, $150 for a disk drive, $50 for a wp and something else (lang. or game or edu), and the price is $280. In my mind, that is the BARE minimum system. No cassettes pleez, disk drives have been the only way to go for years. Take that bare system and add a printer, modem, 2nd drive, more sw, BOOKS, monitors, and the price shoots up again. My dream cheapo system would be a PClone board mounted on top of a 3.5" drive. with space under it for another 3.5 drive (of course). It would have TTL and composite mono out. 640K, 8Mhz, all the usual. There would be ports for printer, and rs232. Only 2 slots: 1 for a hard drive, the other for a modem or whatever. Definitely not a power system, but useful. John Kawakami