Reply to post: Re: "remember how you had to get the RAM pack balanced just right?" @Jedit

Re: "remember how you had to get the RAM pack balanced just right?" @Jedit

"By the time you had bought a number of these, you might as well have bought a more capable machine!"

That was the point though,wasn't it. Those who could afford a more capable machine,did. The other choice was a loan or HP, so you'd end paying even more. An cheap but expandable and modular system was what brought computing to the masses. I well remember wrangling over the decision as to whether a faster, more reliable floppy drive instead of cassette tape would be a better investment than a printer which would let me debug my programmes by seeing more than 16 lines of code at once.

For the record, the printer won. About £200 + another £35 for the interface box. The floppy drive came the following year and was only £150 (prices fell) with another £80 for the disk interface box, which includes a centronics interface and <gasp> a real time clock!