My first computer was actually very simple. In an electronics I used a Z80 chip to build a simple calculator that used LEDs to display the result.
Later on I worked at a computer store that sold primarily Apple ][s and laster Commodores with the C64 and Amiga.
Memory prices went up and down. 512k board for the Apple //e was around $900 when it first came out and dropped down to around $400, but then shot back up to $900 when a couple of factories burned down in the late 80's.
The first 2400 baud modems were $1000. When Hayes introduced their 9600 baud modem it was also $999 retail and I purchased one for $500 to use on my BBS system.
And to storage, right about 1987, a company called Seagate introduced the largest consumer hard drive, a whopping 60 MB. The retail price? $1200.
And to memory, I remember a local lawyer wanting to max out his Mac Plus with 4 MB of RAM, and this was just after Toshiba lost a plant to a fire, memory prices were extremely high and he paid $1800 for that memory.
yep, we?ve come a long ways since those days. 16 GB of RAM and 3 TB hard drives sell for less than $100.
People like to say there is more computing power in a cell phone then there were in early computers. Think about this: Some BlueTooth headsets have a processor in it that is 4-10x faster than the the original Apple ][. Your average home router has a processor in it that is 200-400x the speed of the Apple ][, and have 100 times the memory! The entire Apple //e with I/O, CPU and 10x the memory could fit on a USB stick and would run at least 10x as fast.
