Comment by anyfoo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anyfoo | Hacker News Reader

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> Having those specs then would be like running a 37 Ghz CPU with 16 TB of RAM now.

More, much more. We've long hit a point of diminishing returns for a lot of standard consumer workflows. More CPU and RAM helps mainly for "specialist" workflows (including software engineering) and can be really nice, but computers have overall been "fast" for a while now.

Back then you could notice an increase in CPU frequency or cache in almost everything you do, even if it was just writing a letter. And more RAM allowed you to do things that were virtually[1] impossible before. Especially because there were no SSDs: You paid dearly for anything that could not be kept ready in your puny RAM.

[1] Pun sort of intended: Virtual memory might technically allow you to do those things anyway, but often the performance cost was so high that it was no fun, if not pointless. But we're also talking of the DOS/Win 3.x/DOS extender days, where virtual memory was technically possible, but definitely not ubiquitous.

A 33MHz 486 was not even "standard consumer gear" in 1993 - it was a costly, business oriented machine that could cost as much as a high-end Mac Pro in 2022 (after controlling for inflation). Standard consumer prices would have gotten you a home-computer class machine like the Atari ST, that was pushing a handful of MHz. Go even cheaper and you would've had to make do with a 8-bit home computer, like the C128 - little more than a glorified desk calculator. There's not even a loose equivalent to that class of machines today, aside from deep embedded stuff that a consumer will never have reason to touch.

Yes, and even with that "upper class" PC for business, upgrading CPU and RAM in small steps always gave you a massive gain and new possibilities, and you could keep doing that for a long long time. I'm not sure younger people who essentially grew up with supercomputers in their pocket can really feel what that meant. (No shade meant at all. I, in turn, grew up with many other things taken for granted the same way, before.)

Our 100Mhz Pentium 1 IBM desktop in 1995 was pretty awesome compared to my friends computers (if they even had one) at the time.

Not sure about 1993.. I had one at work (486/33) in 1991. 16MB RAM. It wasn't cheap, but it was cheaper than the personal AT 286 I bought in 1987.. relatively speaking the most expensive computer I've ever bought. So in 1993 the price point.. well, I don't know. Not out of range for consumers though (I found an article in the Los Angeles Times, from 1994, which mentioned a "fully equipped 33 MHz 486" at $1388 in 1993 - their point was that it was only $1000 in 1994). That was just a fraction of what I paid in 1987 for that AT.

I tested Linux on that 486/33 in early 1992, and when my office X terminal broke down I replaced it with that Linux box the same year (I can't remember what the experimental X11 was called - this was before XFree86. Something YFX86 I think.. but no search finds it). As soon as it was possible I replaced the CPU with a 486 DX2-66. Probably early 1993. Still only got 16MB though. Enough for me. Now this 16GB laptop runs out of memory all the time.. oh well.

Yep. I remember back in the day, getting a few extra KB from config.sys and other configuration files means you can start a game that would refuse to start if otherwise. There were a lot of tricks for that. People nowadays won't believe that. After all it's rare to find software that requires more than 16GB to start.

Upgrading one's PC was also a big thing even into the mid 200X. A lot of magazines devoted entire columns for upgrade and installation guide. Hardware manufacturers lured users by sending extra copy of AAA games bundled with purchasing their hardware.

I must say the 90s was really the golden era for players and developers. Lots of opportunities, developers usually had to learn asm or C or Pascal to do real work. While it is still possible to push AAA titles for a small team. Both ID and Epic were examples.

Nowadays it's just red sea everywhere.

> Yep. I remember back in the day, getting a few extra KB from config.sys and other configuration files means you can start a game that would refuse to start if otherwise.

I remember discovering Quarterdeck QEMM and found it worked so much better than EMM386 for making programs load into Upper, High, or Conventional memory segments.

Oh yeah, and the whole clusterfuck of "extended memory" versus "expanded memory".

Yeah man those were the good/bad days. I had a friend who was a Japanese strategic game fan and he constantly bombarded us with tricks he used to modify the game or the ram to get better attributes for characters. He is also the one who lent me a CD containing a pirated copy of Duke3d which bootstrapped my modern gameplay life.

I think OP meant it more like an elite rig than actually comparing it to a theoretical 37Ghz. At that time most people wouldn't even have a computer at home, never mind one that could actually _run_ stuff. My first pc (a 80286) didn't even have a hdd! I had to load MS DOS from a floppy disk.

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