The Computer Chronicles - Hard Disk Storage (1985)

Special thanks to archive.org for hosting these episodes. Downloads of all these episodes and more can be found at: archive.org/det...

[@datasoluble]

"..32-bit machines.. Where the address space is unconstrained." 4 gb seemed like infinity I guess.

[@wii166]

lol just took a look at my ram usage on 10 its at 5GB and i have only 5 tabs open in chrome and no heavy background tasks atm

[@Phenom98]

@@wii166 Unfortunately, we've been building layer upon layer of software and a lot of it is useless

[@ArumesYT]

@@wii166 That's insane even by modern standards. There must be a huge memory leak somewhere.

[@ArumesYT]

@@Phenom98 A lot of it is very useful for developers. The PC platform is a bit complicated, but you should try some Android programming and see how easy it is for you to implement usage of the fingerprint scanner in your apps, just for example. You really wouldn't want to do that without modern layers, requiring you to do all the low-level stuff yourself.

[@mikeshehata3847]

With emerging IOT, I wonder if the nearly "unconstrained" number of IPv6 addresses will ever be looked at in the same way, where people in 2050 laugh at us for thinking 128 bits was enough for IP addressing.

[@mikethespike7579]

I remember seeing my very first hard disk, some time around 1974. It looked like a washing machine, just bigger. The technician proudly explained that it could store up to 5 MB.

[@brentboswell1294]

I remember when people were afraid of walking across the room because a computer with a hard drive was in the room. And early hard drives with big platters were indeed crash happy!

[@mikethespike7579]

@@brentboswell1294 It took a lot of time for companies introducing computers into their work places to understanding that PVC flooring and carpets made of man made fibre were one of the main causes for computer crashes. I once demonstrated to the boss of a company how I could take out a computer by just pointing my finger at it. I also advised on keeping a few plants in the room to keep the humidity at a certain level. That helped a lot.

[@GaryCameron]

That's enough for one .mp3 as long as the bitrate isn't too high!

[@pawnstarrickharrison7225]

@@GaryCameron right? Crazy how advanced tech has come nowadays, 5MB won't get you anywhere today unless you're on retro hardware.

[@-dash]

@@GaryCameronhey now, 5MB is enough for *several* seconds of 720p footage. It’s plenty of space!

[@DeviantDeveloper]

Guy in 1985: "In the old days of computers...."

[@slipknot54095]

😂

[@HallOfMemeYT]

In the old days of comment 😂😂

[@boredofcarverticaladverts]

That made me.laugh also

[@pantherplatform]

From 10 megabytes to 11 megabytes!

[@mensaswede4028]

Guy in 2050: In the old days of the 2020’s….

[@mirozen_]

I've been programming since 1977, and worked on my own computer hardware since 1983. It's weird to remember actually working with disk drives as old (and older) than those in this video and thinking at the time how great it was to have drives capable of such massive storage - and then thinking about how I can look at a drive with a couple terabytes today and think it too small! 😊 45 years of working with computers really gives you an interesting perspective!

[@a.c.4054]

Don't you miss when computers were for intelligent people only, though?

[@craftuar2439]

@@a.c.4054 Back in time normal people cant install most Hard disk. Possible they can bring the hard to the PC, but the installation was way to difficult for unexperienced user @this time :)

[@jgunther3398]

i had a dual floppy setup at home, one with some source code and the other with the operating system. don't remember which the compiler and assembler was on. at work i had a hard drive, something less than 10 meg if i remember right. not at lot of difference in speed :)

[@rushnerd]

@@a.c.4054 Computing is for everyone. PCs back then were much less user friendly, VERY expensive, and standards were barely in place. Since the late 90's/early 00's it's been a joy to build PCs because everything more or less got ironed out. Even then it was rough for a while until about 2011 and on. I've worked with a lot of systems, and the fun factor is here now for desktop users rather than just hardcore enthusiasts. Never imaged I would have a PC with no HDDs though!

[@annunacky4463]

Yeah we had DEC PDP’s with disc drives big like a washing machine. A laundromat of storage!

[@saranshkumar1744]

These guys will never be forgotten.

[@raven4k998]

that mass storage device is the size of a lawn mower man that thing is huge and only has 10 megabytes like damn son

[@AndrewTubbiolo]

Who's that?

[@jritechnology]

@@AndrewTubbiolo The older people are talking, shhh.

[@FrankHeuvelman]

Who?

[@halfsourlizard9319]

I mean, literally everything will be forgotten.

[@bluebull399]

I love watching these old computer chronicles program, it's so interesting!

[@TheDrunkenMug]

I agree, It's realy well made. I enjoy watching these shows too ! 😀

[@goodlookinouthomie1757]

It was a different age when there were a lot more grown ups on the screen. And I think society in general was more grown up.

[@bennylloyd-willner9667]

Agree, and how nice to see a comment that doesn't just repeat the well-known fact that technology advances "WOW, imagine me going back and show them a..." and such comments 🤣🤣

[@Andytlp]

no problem understanding the tech jargons. For an avg person of that time it would be all gibberish. Today anyone using a pc/laptop or a smartphone would understand porbably half of whats said. Society leaning towards personal computing, for better or worse. Social media and news shaping peoples opinions, beliefs and world views. Just sheep everywhere. Critical thinking is at a short supply these days.

[@klade77]

What kind of user needs 60MB of storage?

[@rsalek]

Ed Dillenger would, MCP (Master Control Program) user at ENCOM.

[@jeffwads]

BP and AP. Before Porn and After Porn.

[@gtPacheko]

@BrackynMor that's some low quality porn

[@priscillaemerald987]

Too much memory for us to use!

[@ShamrockParticle]

@BrackynMor that's what Peg Bundy says!

[@tubular7752]

I love watching old footage and video from decades past. It makes one think how weirdly familiar that time is to today, and yet somehow also quite different.

[@Freakingbean]

Same shit different toilet

[@danteerskine7678]

I feel you

[@MadScientist267]

I've got a 40 meg with the cover off of it similar to that initial 60 full height shown. One of my favorite conversation pieces, as of last demo about 10 years ago, it still spooled up and found cyl 0. Computer parts from this time still told a story... things were big, made lots of wild sounds, and were slow as molasses uphill in January but they still grab my attention more than any modern versions. Solid state is boring AF at that level. Used to be able to tell a lot about what was going on just by listening to the heads move on a drive. Got to where I could tell what was being accessed just by hearing the seeks. Bah, I digress. Things may be awesome now but they were *magical* back then 🤷‍♂️

[@JaquesBobe]

Gotta love how they talking about 60MB being "endless" storage, while quickly glancing over a 500MB CD-ROM.

[@raven4k998]

endless storage I find 2tb very restricting on storage 60 megs was nothing!

[@u.v.s.5583]

CD-ROM is for music. The hard disk is for .txt files. Even if you are Stephan King, you won't be able to fill it up.

[@ShadowAngel-lt8nw]

@@raven4k998 I got 6 TB and currently have about 500 gigs leftt free, lol. My first HDD was 130 Megabytes, that's not even enough for the graphic drivers today 🤣

[@whoknows8225]

60MB was alot in that time.... you did not ever need more than that on your home PC.

[@fernandobernardo6324]

@@u.v.s.5583 CD-Audio is for music, CD-ROM is for data.

[@davidboling3245]

This is amazing to watch in 2020. A good reminder that there were many, many brilliant people involved with the advancement of computer technology.

[@nadirnazim9342]

now everything is outsourced to timbaktu

[@airzorne]

It's amazing reading this comment in 2023, how technology has advanced

[@stargazer7644]

It was even more amazing to live.

[@HwoarangtheBoomerang]

Yeah.

[@samuraikyokkan]

Yes now we are advanced enough so that thugs can post on social media where to flash mob and rob hard working people because of "reparation", all thinks to super computing. Amazing times

[@roachtoasties]

60 mb disks. That's crazy. I'll never need all that space.

[@gangarax]

my first disk was 10 MB . It was actually 40 but 30 MB was Bad Sector.I had to remove 30MB to non usable area and playing Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis working faster in it :)

[@SnipE_mS]

I thought the same thing when I got my first 20GB drive

[@GoTeamScotch]

Meanwhile, in 2020, I just installed a printer driver today that was 400mb

[@AlexandreLeGrand999]

Call of duty modern Warfare : Hold my beer.

[@pepecuu8060]

COD:Warzone is 250,000+MB right now

[@rafaelallenblock]

For thousands of years we lived essentially as our great grandparents did but now our own parents technologies are obsolete.

[@tomo9126]

Our OWN technologies are obsolete several times over.

[@otheraccount5252]

@@tomo9126 And then artificial superintelligence obsoletes human technology fifty times per second.

[@cbygelightbulb]

I mean it's not like it didn't happen, it was just slower turn over. It's not like we went from living in caves to the industrial revolution. Technology has always advanced and eventually those things that were invented before are so commonplace that you don't think of them as being something that doesn't just exist. It's not good to think that the past was better because things were harder. If those people could have done something easier, then they would have. In fact, they did figure out how to do it easier, and that's why it's easier now.

[@MicroFourThirdsCorner]

Not only is our grandparent's technology obsolete, but so is our parent's, our own, our children's and now for me my grandchildren's . Technology is moving so fast that anything 5 years old has been superseded at least once, maybe more.

[@MickeyTTT]

My own technology is obsolete. Can it run Crysis? Not a chance (ten year old HP 2740p laptop). It might be old but it's still more than a million times faster and has half a million times more memory than the computer I had when this was on TV.

[@Jamestele1]

Both of the gentlemen knew a lot about technology. Stewart was/is a tv host and writer who was fascinated with technology. Gary Kildall was a computer scientist and successful in the technology business, and brought the first-hand technical knowledge. I love watching these 1980s shows on technology. It is nostalgic, but I learn a lot because they explain everything so clearly.

[@ImpetuouslyInsane]

I say it is a crime what happened to Kildall and CP/M. Bill Gates basically stole code from CP/M for DOS. Gary didn't deserve the exit from this world he got.

[@toshiroyamada2443]

Didn't Kildall also create the CPM OS ?

[@UncleKennysPlace]

@@toshiroyamada2443 Yep. And is the subject of a couple of urban legends. And died under strange circumstances. I had a CPM box decades ago.

[@toshiroyamada2443]

@UncleKennysPlace it's a bit before my time, but I have learnt some things thanks to KZbin

[@SSJfraz]

"This is the first time apple has given a 3rd party vendors product this kind of endorsement" And the last...

[@Stavroization]

sounded to me like this was apple's first dongle...

[@kylemartin5764]

The kind of sad thing is when you watch any of these Computer Chronicles videos, you realize so so so many of the vendors/companies you see getting interviewed are long gone

[@tiamat_023]

dont be sad. it's called progress =).

[@dnakatomiuk]

Unfortunately the above comment is right it's called technological progress and as we moved with the times most companies here didn't either come with a new form of storage. So either shut up shop or were bought and merged with others over the years, so as one comes up with a great idea they then get swallowed up then it's not long before happens to them and they get took over. Here IBM seem to be in charge of what ever happens in the PC industry, today that would be called a monopoly lol

[@koltred]

its sad but in most cases the pioneer of something usually never lives long enough to see what it amounts to.

[@mdcs1992]

I know. Gary Kildall of them.

[@jackilynpyzocha662]

Very sad!

[@Mauser_.]

RIP Gary. He was a great man 😢

[@TheJuanvisu]

He was one of the greatest on the computer world, sadly, today not many people remember him...

[@RetroFan]

The host? He's dead?

[@cbw56]

@@RetroFan yes he passed in 1994 :-(

[@nukfauxsho]

@@cbw56 Got in a bar fight like a boss. Unfortunately nerds do not hold out during bar fights D:

[@Not-TheOne]

Agreed!

[@Ojisan642]

Host: Would a home user have any use for a 70 megabyte hard drive? Guests: lol no

[@darinp5612]

not then they wouldn't

[@darinp5612]

@@Jb991-q9x of course not... this is all before stupid people invaded the tubes

[@FirstLastOne]

Hold my keyboard...

[@ts214121]

You could put a few MP3 files on that.

[@justassimple8328]

I can put a low quality video some music and files like documents

[@headrushindi]

I was a teen in the 70's and I know I shouldn't be amazed by this ...but I just bought a 32 Gig thumb drive today at Walgreens , and looking back ...I'm amazed , and amused.

[@prltqdf9]

32GB? They still sell thumb drives that small?

[@RubenKelevra]

Got a 2 TB thumb drive for 10 bucks from Ali. Yes it's slow. But yes it stores 2 TB and is probably half a million times faster than the hard drives in this video 😏

[@mikea1127]

Just imagine 50 years from now how our cutting edge technology today will look like.

[@danaeckel]

1TB? What am I going to do with that? Can't even save a pic at 1TB!

[@seniorbob2180]

@@danaeckel 1TB pics, lol, if I can't see your cells, is it really a high-quality pic?

[@ungeschaut]

​@@seniorbob2180you are thinking in 2D. Just think about 3D scene capture with up to DNA information

[@nighthawk0077]

Really depends how much more computing power and storage we need and what new fad/tech will be invented (holographic projection etc) What makes these these old shows interesting is they are a window into some of the very first home computer systems available.

[@mvl71]

Wish I could live my life in a time loop, starting around the launch of the C64, to about 1995, then _goto 10_ Some of the happiest days of my life. Just erase my memory and send me back. 640k is all I need indeed.

[@KnightofAges]

640k? You're insane! I did just fine with 48k, upgrading to 128k in 1987. It's all I need.

[@jon6124]

Shouldn't be too hard. Save the following as goodoldays.bas compile and run. Will also fit on a floppy -------------------- REM the good ol' days 1984: REM sleep for 11 years Sleep 346896000 1995: REM return to good ol' days GOTO 1984 2019: REM danger ahead PRINT "Error occured, stay away from 2020." GOTO END 2020: END: --------------------

[@mvl71]

@gothael1 Thanks! I was wondering why it didn't work.

[@stargazer7644]

@@KnightofAges I started out with 2k, and that was shared as video memory! When your program got too big, you started losing characters on the display.

[@etshArk87]

Oh yes, me i rather go from 1985 to 1998. These were glorious days of technology. so much diversity in music, video, games, recording a TV show in a VHS and having to wait for a couple of minutes to rewing the whole thing. Walking with Walkmans, people breakdancing in the streets with those huge black rectangle battery cassette radios. 8Bit as soundtrack added to an awesome videogame. Listening to Syntwave. Or starting in 1997 playing The Elder Scrolls Daggerfall until 1998. Playing GameBoy, nintendo.. First playstation. Compose Music in a computer, connecting to the old 52k dial internet with an external modem attached that does the starting noise, it was music to my ears then redo everything again, and again. I would certainly never grow tired of that. I actually pity the new generation, they take everything for granted, we had to be smart about electronics, fix as much as we could, and have legit fun with friends OUTSIDE of the house. Wish there would be a timeline anomaly and just roll back time to 1985.

[@maximushornet]

Wow wouldn't you love to show them a 1tb micro SD card lol

[@cppguy16]

I would walk in to the studio, and show them some 8K 3d 360 footage on an Oculus headset, then some 100Mpx HDR medium format images. Gentlemen, see you in the future.

[@cujoedaman]

@@cppguy16 While someone in the future comes back to show us something that we can't even fathom from this point :P

[@darinp5612]

@@cppguy16 in others words, porn

[@sicarius100]

I can already imagine how it would go, "What would you even use so much space for???" video recordings, yes .. cat videos

[@areyouundoingthatorwhat9181]

You would have been burnt at the stake as a witch back then with that. I would imagine a even an old 2GB card would blow their minds let alone 1TB,start telling them how cheap they are and the burning at the stake bit might actually apply!

[@LordHorst]

I remember back when CD-ROMs had storage space of 650MB, and then the first HDs with over 700MB became affordable for the general public, and we where like "Wow, imagine that, you could store AN ENTIRE CD on that hard drive!"

[@ShadowAngel-lt8nw]

And when CD-Rom happened everybody was shocked by that. I still remember a picture in a gaming magainze when the Mega CD came out, it showd a huge stack of Mega Drive Cartridges behind a CD-Rom with the caption "ALL of these games fit on this single CD-Rom". It was mind-blowing :D

[@Cr125stin]

⁠​⁠@@ShadowAngel-lt8nwI’d love to find the ad and picture you are talking about with the CD-rom compared to multiple mega drive carts! I looked on google briefly

[@suminshizzles6951]

My first cd-rom cost me 400 dollars. 96 or 97 that was. It was one of the first re-writable ones. Iomega

[@AllanDeal]

If you remember that your as old as I am dude we’re getting old 😂😂😂

[@flagger2020]

​I waited for CDRW.. the disks were like 10$ each.. i got my drive from Circuit City and it was by Creative (younger people might not know they made anything other than sound cards..) wanted a Plextor but an Adaptec SCSI was expensive too

[@northsouthy74]

Its funny how he starts with saying "In the old days of computers.." LOL

[@raven4k998]

in the old days I used a Pentium 60 with a 512 meg hard disk and 8 megs of ram built in to the mother board

[@sluxi]

There were old days to look back at back then and 2022 will seem like old days at some point too.

[@johns250]

Imagine what they'll be commenting about us in 35 years...

[@JcRabbit]

By the looks of it, "dad, please tell me again about that time when food grew on shelves and we moved around in big metal cages, will ya? I'm freezing here!"

[@ordinaryJeff]

(Watches old Linus Tech Tips video about making 3 petabytes storage with a mountain of hdds) -"Ha ha, my old phone came with 10pb."

[@0KylePrior0]

Woah woah woah.. They didn't even break the single digit GHz rating? Most people didn't have more than 1TB of ram? Lemme guess. Next you're going to tell me they only got half a petabyte of storage and *ONE* 3D mouse.

[@zakofrx]

It won't be kind.. These people are professional tech workers being professional.. Now we have people screaming about no safe spaces, attacking their own customers for having different belifs than them and canceling people they work with due to their skin color etc... Just a bunch of babies..

[@Andrei608]

You can get a taste of it now..most people now have 4-16GB of Ram. Samsung made a Ram card 512 GB ...

[@mashroob]

I remember when I owned a computer for the first time in the '90's. I can also remember being overjoyed when I got my first ZIP drive... Something better than 1.3 MB (floppy) storage at a time was just plain God to me! Then I got a CD-RW drive that could store up to 650 MB per CD. All those hours I spent porting 440 floppy disks to my HD and putting it all on a single CD. I can remember being the coolest person in town. Now CDs are so obsolete and considered small volumes. Amazing how we got along with kBs and MBs and now TBs are starting to seem like chump change. How times have changed in the computer world...

[@nyccollin]

3.5” floppies held 1.44 MB.

[@a4e69636b]

@@nyccollin That is the unformatted capacity.

[@ShadowAngel-lt8nw]

@@a4e69636b Wrong, the unformated capacity of a standard 3.5 floppy is actually 2 megabytes. Hence why back in the 90's software existed (i mean they still exist today like RawWrite) that allowed you to put more than just the 1,44 megabytes on a floppy and dos/windows could still actually read it, altough going beyond a certain size had the risk that the drive would actually reset to the first sectors and overwrite those because it couldn't reach the last few sectors, so the overwrite was usually limited ot around 1.7 megabytes. I remember doing that back in the 90's just to sequeeze as many Doom Wads and Duke Nukem mods on a single floppy as possible, lol. The same was true with CD-Rs later, there were various tools that allowed to "overburn" the disc and get more capacity, altough CD Drives were really finicky with those and most of the time it would just result in read errors.

[@castirondude]

@@a4e69636b IIRC the 3.5" HD diskettes were around 2MB unformatted, 1.44 formatted for IBM PC's.

[@utha2665]

@@castirondudeThose were the high density (HD) disks, originally they were formatted to 720 kb.

[@megabojan1993]

Gary had one the most kind-hearted laughs I've ever heard. Too bad he is not longer with us :'(

[@moow950]

On KZbin he is still reviewing 1980s computer technology forever 😀

[@enda0man]

Poor guy, he's supposed to be in the position of bill gates right now.. Bill gates stole his system and made windows, he's been in the dust since and died because of his depression from learning that he missed the opportunity of a lifetime, the best business deal in history, also the most influential.

[@robertturnip7850]

I don't know why he would be depressed. He was still a very wealthy man and he didn't have the constant spotlight that Bill Gates has.

[@enda0man]

Robert Turnip there’s a difference between wealthy, and Bill Gates wealthy. Not to mention the publicity and etc

[@robertturnip7850]

Scott Chiste I personally wouldn’t want Bill Gates money or publicity.

[@DataWaveTaGo]

I did a power input calculation for a 1 terabyte drive made up of 1981 CDC Phoenix 80 megabyte drives (I used such drives in 1981 for some MP/M systems). The array of CDC drives would number 12,500 units with a total power consumption of 6 megawatts. The drives would cover about 112,000 square feet.

[@ezydenias8505]

What I also found interesting, that even if you attempted to make this system, it would not work due to be way to big. The main problem here is the speed of light which. I mean I could imagine it might work but only very slowly, like extremely slowly and you would need special cards everywhere. Actually I think you would need to have install an internet between them. But using their internet back than it would take ages to save a picture just to find the exact spot where to save it.

[@billyoung8118]

Another interesting calculation: it would take about 2,778 of the old 1.44MB floppy disks to store Windows 10.

[@peterbelanger4094]

Now, we can get a 1TB micro sd (approx ONE square cm), using just a couple hundred milliwatts of power, for just a few hundred dollars.

[@gablia2002]

Huh......😨

[@Jim-be8sj]

Great comment! For some added context, it turns out that 6 megawatts is about how much power is needed for 6,000 homes.

[@hedgehogchaser2494]

The irony that the majority of us probably watched this on a phone is more than I can handle.

[@parishna4882]

I watched it in VR.

[@Ss-tt9pp]

Lol

[@arminwilde5022]

The real irony is Steve died of cancer after living his whole life as a living cancer lol!

[@PointyTailofSatan]

I worked at Computerland HQ during these times as a national support tech. I still remember how in awe we were when our first 300MB Fujutsu 5.25" drive arrived. It was an early model, and it had so many jumpers on it, we called it the "hedgehog".

[@james5637]

Is no-one going to mention Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak's brother selling an aftermarket hyperdrive expansion for the Mac?! 🤷🏼‍♂️🤯🤣

[@mikhail5002]

holy shit, he actually is.

[@lwnf360]

I guess that's how they got the special warranty endorsement. It's not what you know, it's who you know!

[@mmotodad]

I googled him to just confirm that it was Woz's brother. Apparently in 1985 he was quoted as stating that no one would need computers at their home, he said what are they going to do with it, balance their checkbook? You can do that without a computer.

[@bayareanewman1566]

About 2 years ago, the woz was eating at a taqueria in Gilroy... he apparently lives nearby

[@Mark-OutWest]

@@bayareanewman1566 Yish. You couldn't pay me to live in Hellroy. I don't care how much access to garlic I'd have there.

[@latt.qcd9221]

2050: How on Earth did people manage to get by with only 10 Exabytes of storage?

[@MrInvinciblewarrior]

I doubt atm we will reach exabyte at end consumer, at least by 2050.eg hobbit hfr cinema master is about 600gb. There is also a big issue with physical limits in play. Its more likely ai will help us with much better live compression.

[@kellingc]

Well, for one, the OS took up less than 70KB

[@SpinMChecker]

I do not see demand for that (as said by mil people before and get crushed by the future. ) But basically All storage is basically used for movies ... That's it. Not for software

[@peorakef]

bold of you to assume we're going to make it to 2050

[@bennoboy97]

Well COD Moder Warfare IS approaching half a terabyte on my pc😐

[@sydus81599]

Apple has decided that the installation of a hyperdrive will not void the warranty... Wow have times changed drastically with 🍎

[@speddie52]

Apple used to be the 'Good Value' computer How times have changed.

[@cujoedaman]

Yeah, but the fact that "nothing is compatible with an Apple product" still goes strong today :D

[@williamlinington9166]

Apple has become to proprietary.

[@-raist]

Funny, how Steve Jobs become the very thing he despised, a greedy soulless SOB.

[@maggiejetson7904]

@@-raist Which is why Fortnite is throwing the hammer at Apple in 2020.

[@nightowl3582]

I love looking back and seeing where we once were as far as tech goes. I'm sitting here at a desktop with around 14TB of storage and 64GB of RAM. This would have blown these guy's minds, Lol.

[@Overflow02]

Who needs 64gb of ram wtf

[@CaioVinicius-nc3cy]

@@Overflow02 this guy needs. ???

[@Overflow02]

@@CaioVinicius-nc3cy unless this guy is compiling some heavy heavy heavy ass software I don't think he'll ever need the 64gb

[@nightowl3582]

@@Overflow02 And that's exactly what I do along with having a number of Virtual Machines running with decent amount of RAM allocated to each them; the RAM isn't going to waste.

[@coindog6336]

@@Overflow02 Minecraft players

[@RioSul50]

In 1980 I purchased my first personal computer. It was a Radio Shack TRS80 Mod 1 with a cassette tape as a storage device. I later increased the 16k to 48k, an expansion system with a floppy drive and printer. By 1981 I transferred to our corporation's data center (world scale petrochemical refinery) as an operator. The computer was a Sperry Univac 1100/60 MP (multi-processor) with 4 meg of ram, 4 meg of cache and several 440 meg hard drives. We used tapes to store data. It was a $10 million computer system (and among many other things we printed off multi million dollar checks. We transferred a lot of data (from the maintenance department fro IBM 34's. I could not have guessed where we would end up.

[@fulkthered]

Imagine going back in time and showing them a 128 gb micro sd card.

[@Ag89q43G0HyA]

Just imagine yourself watching how an alien is landing in your backyard and shows you a thin crystal having all and far more the total compute power and storage that is in this world.

[@fernandoduarte1811]

@@Ag89q43G0HyA Now imagine taking a shit inside that same spaceship on the floor. Alien is in for a surprise.

[@LotarioRed]

so much porn in a few millimeter, how far the scientist has come!

[@trajectoryunown]

@@fernandoduarte1811 Given our society, it's their fault for letting us on the ship in the first place. They should've researched us more thoroughly. XD

[@sean8604]

@@furrywithacomputer9824 No, they'd probably learn from it and innovate current technology... and when you return back to present day, the "future" will likely be radically different.

[@johnnysparkleface3096]

When I was in college, we submitted our COBOL programs on punch cards for batch processing. You'd come back later to see if it ran without problems and if the output was correct. Later our computer science department got 3 new Commodore PETs, I was amazed by that technology. My first personal computers were an Atari 400 (8 bit CPU, programs were saved to cassette and it had 8K of memory) and a Timex Sinclair. That was 39 years ago.

[@friggindoc]

"32 bit machines where the adress space is un-constrained" Yeeaahhh 30 years later the 4 gigs constrains we get from 32-bits are pretty tight...

[@korewafcr]

+Eyjolfur Kari (friggindoc) Thanks god we are already using 64bits address spaces, which finally are indeed unconstrained.

[@Designandrew]

+Eyjolfur Kari (friggindoc) why are you surprised by this? He was not incorrect in what he said at the time. Just as in 30 years from now someone would think you are just as prehistoric..

[@friggindoc]

Designandrew I think we will still be alright with 64-bits in 30 years. I actually think we will be ok with 64-bits for a looooong time unless computing goes through some fundamental design changes.

[@mikakorhonen5715]

+Eyjolfur Kari (friggindoc) 64-bit is double of 32-bit, so 60 years then.

[@dixie_rekd9601]

+Mika Korhonen not quite, the way storage works, its not double. its an exponential scaling, so 64bit is many many MANY times more addresses than 32bit.

[@daveinstlouis]

It's amazing how far we've come since the mid eighties. I have a couple of 8 terabyte Western Digital external hard drives that I picked up at the Micro Center store here in town for $150 each.

[@coindog6336]

It doesn't make sense why external drives are cheaper. At my Walmart a 4tb internal costs $130 while a 12tb external is only $150 more

[@davidkennerly]

I remember Gary very well. He was a really nice guy and terrific to work for. Also, I used to watch this show religiously. I probably watched this very episode.

[@mythril4]

Oh how fun it would be to bring a Seagate SAS-12G 800GB SSD (Data transfer rate of 1.2GB per second) back to those days. I'd probably end up in Area 51.

[@mythril4]

Touche. Heck, just take my Galaxy Note 3 back in time. Even workout towers it's beyond a super computer. If the future hardware does not get me stuck in Area 51, time travel will.

[@mythril4]

I am 31 now, my first machine was a 286. There were more advance machines at the time but hey, I got it all for $10, as a kid, I was happy. What I really miss about those days was the excitement about each advancement I got my hands on. For nostalgic purposes, I still have my Pentium 66MHz processor from back in the day. It was the transition from the 386 all the way to the Pentium II processors that really taught me a lot about processor clocking. On the 386 to Pentium boards, you had to configure everything; the voltage, the clock,the buss speed, the whole shibang, all with jumpers. Good times indeed.

[@RealWitblitz]

Come back to this comment box in 2045 and tell us about your Seagate SAS-12G 800GB SSD then!

[@julwin1985]

TheRealWitblitz Seagate? That company which went bankrupt 2037 after their Adaptive Brain Capacity got banned by several governments? That thing was bonkers! I had it for about a year. Though I do not remember much of that year. But later people switched to external artificial brain nodes whilst Apple has its own storage system, the iTree, which is compatible with apple trees only, ironically. It may sound odd to you as it sounds odd to me to hear the term "mega bite" or something that I had to look up to some historical documents in order to learn what that is. In our time we don't count in "bits" and "bites", instead we count in cats and birds. The only thing left as a legacy of Seagate's ABC-standard. ~ A time traveler. PS: Do not trust the ostriches, they'll be up to something in 2039.

[@mythril4]

julwin1985 Haha! That gave me a good laugh for the day, thanks! ^_^

[@EJBert]

Sadly I remember watching this show. Gawd, I'm old but good to know I didn't have a life back then either.

[@justgivemethetruth]

Ha, me too. Do you ever remember watching the show "Fast Forward"?

[@EJBert]

@@justgivemethetruth I did but I was always more a Monty Python fan.

[@justgivemethetruth]

@@EJBert Fast Forward was not a comedy, it was a technology show that at the time was pretty good.

[@EJBert]

@@justgivemethetruth lol, it was also an Australian sketch comedy series around that time!

[@CrisisGuildWOW]

Gary loved to ask the hard pressing questions and making the guest squirm to keep from stumbling. You can tell he deeply enjoyed that to some level... :)

[@climbeverest]

Gary Kildall is the father of CP/M, and began microcomputers, nice to see him adjusting to a world where CP/M lost its shine. Unfortunately he passed away too early!

[@neriozulberti1492]

..command😊

[@juliust.5650]

Ahh, the good old days.. I had a 5mb HD that was larger than original desktops and thought I'd never fill it. So much has changed.

[@ninbri64]

I was born in 86 so i missed the computer chronicals train, but watching these episodes on KZbin now really help bring me back to my beginning days of computers where computers were still expensive and fairly exotic, but more and more upcoming. I was the weird kid that ran home from school excited because windows 95 showed up in the mail and i couldn't wait to see the start button. And I would watch a hard drive defrag for hours. So yeah it's really fun going back in time with these episodes and feeling the excitement of the news and exciting growth of computers at the time.

[@guillermogutierrez710]

Same for me. I saw and used a computer first time in 1995, at my mom's workplace. It was probably a DOS machine with no graphical interface. Then, maybe a year later, someone showed me MS Paint running on Windows 95, and I was ecstatic to see that you could move that thing called mouse, and the same movement was drawn in the screen of the computer. Then our first family computer arrived in 1998, and I was looking for a physical Start button in the keyboard or the case hahaha. Good times. Now I write software for living, which is very cool.

[@knerduno5942]

Followed by AOL CD's in the mail?

[@lordcron]

I remember watching Computer Chronicles and this episode when it originally aired way back then. It's so cool revisiting what use to be a big deal.

[@awuma]

I had a lot of these things... I recall the first 10 MB hard drive I bought for CAD $ 1500 circa 1984. I took it home in a carton, wondering if anybody on the subway had any idea what marvel I was carrying. By the way, the AT based on the 286 processor was a dog, with an insane way of accessing more memory than the 8088 of the original PC and a clunky floating point 287 coprocessor. The most important PC came in 1986, the Compaq Deskpro 386, which kept the AT's improved bus but used the vastly better 386 processor and 387 co-processor. It sank IBM's more sophisticated but closed PS/2 line and established the open industry standard architecture (ISA) for PCs.

[@Shigawire]

I had a 386 SX 25mhz :)

[@MilMike]

in 1985 I was 6y old, and I remember how I got a Commodore C64 as a birthday gift back then. I didn't even know there were any other computers. C64 was my computer world back then. We didn't have internet, people lived in a vacuum. There was a library in my town but they didn't have ANY tech books.

[@EannaButler]

I remember hearing about hard disks in the 80s. Got an Atari ST in 1988, after having used Apple 2's for a year in school. The ST had a with 3.5inch floppy drive. 3.5inch floppies weren't physically floppy, like the 5.25inch disks I knew from the Apple 2. Brought the computer home, took out the 3.5inch disks, and thought "Hey, these must be hard disks!" 🙂

[@dlewis9760]

And when I moved on from my ST I went with the Amiga. I sure knew how to pick losers.

[@carlhartwell7978]

When saying that something is _a million times better now_ is not actually hyperbole, wow.

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

Completely depends on personal perspective.

[@carlhartwell7978]

@@baronvonlimbourgh1716 Perhaps you say that because the standard user doesn't have 20TB of storage (which is 1 million times better than the standard amount mentioned in this episode). I see where you're coming from, though it's a little pedantic (500GB to 1TB is fairly standard), but I agree of course 20TB is hardly standard. I would suggest only because it's clearly totally unnecessary for the majority, not because it's particularly expensive or impractical and certainly not because it's unfeasible, at least not with external drives.

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

@@carlhartwell7978 i was more talking about just because things are nu faster and bigger it is automaticly soooo much better. Some might think it is, others maybe do not.

[@djmoch1001]

I remember watching Computer Chronicles as a kid / teenager. Crazy how fast technology has improved in the almost 40 years since this episode aired.

[@vijf]

And once again the KZbin algorithm has brought us all here together

[@agostinodibella9939]

Wow, 10 MB for $395! What a bargain! We sure came a long way in storage capacity.

[@ShadowAngel-lt8nw]

All hardware became dirt cheap today. The first CD-Rom Drives were 500-600 bucks (and everybody wanted one when Star Wars Rebel Assault came out, a year later those single speed CD-Roms were obsolete as games like Wing Commander 3 demanded a double speed, making a lot of people fork over the same amount again). Complete PC's costed 5 times as much as they do today.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

@@ShadowAngel-lt8nw If we're looking at the general era of the mid 80s then the cost differential is much more than 5 times as much as today when you factor in inflation adjustments. One can get a brand new small form factor PC for a little over $100, and no they are not crap - about the performance of a 3rd generation i5 computer. Inflation adjust that backwards to 1985 and that is $40. Obviously, no way you were getting a $40 real computer in 1985 - the entry level price for an 8 bit system that had a floppy (a necessity) was like $600 minimum. That's 15x difference right there for the lowest low end. High end the differential was significantly more (mostly because of hard drive prices back then).

[@reygood1]

My first pc is a 386 with 40 meg of hard disk and 2 meg of ram with windows 3.1... it was amazing that time.

[@SternLX]

"This 40 inch Hard Drive held about 10 megabytes." Me: Looks at an unused 2 Terabyte M.2 drive sitting on the edge of his desk. "Oh look, Moore's law in action."

[@virtualxip]

Why aren't you using it?

[@rogerbarnett8412]

I have six or more m.2 drives. My first Compact flash card was maybe 32 mb.. came with my first little digital camera. Not long after, I paid over $200 for a 250 mb card, I recall. I just got a 2 tb CF Express card for my new Canon R5! It was $1000.... I have over 100 TB of storage, including a bunch that aren't used yet. i shoot a lot of pics!

[@virtualxip]

@@rogerbarnett8412 are you talking about m.2 drives or compact flash cards? A 2 TB M.2 drive would be quite expensive to have lying around...

[@uriituw]

I love how _Winchester_ is used as a generic name for a hard disk.

[@straightpipediesel]

It referred specifically to permanently sealed desktop hard drives, versus washing-machine sized hard drives with removable disk packs, used in the 1960's through 1970's.

[@LuisFernando-pq4bq]

Fun fact: In many Countries the word "winchester" became synonym to hard drive.

[@LuisFernando-pq4bq]

@Apple Brazil and other places in Latin America.

[@davebrogan7941]

36 years from now we will look back at our iPhones and laugh at how limited the technology was way back in the good old days of 2021…

[@AshtonCoolman]

Listening to Gary is like listening to a time traveler from the future. He was so ahead of his time.

[@_Mitya]

Тебя не смущает его фамилия??

[@Snowwie88]

Funny how he says "in the old days" while he himself is already "in the old days". But in 1985, a hard disk of 60MB, well not bad. My first hard drive I got in 1991 on my Amiga 500, and it was 20MB (The A590).

[@grabasandwich]

My Dad had a work computer that had a 40 *and* a 60 MB drive! I spent a bunch of time messing around with it, and he used to lose his shit when I'd cause it not to boot and scramble to figure out wtf I did wrong.

[@KnightofAges]

You're in the "old days" too! Also, I remember when these hard drives became affordable to the public... it seemed wonderful that we would not have to reload all programs to the RAM everytime we'd want to run something. Still, I only got money for my first hard drive in 1992. But I got an OP one - 45 Megabytes of storage!

[@mihela8167]

The hard disk was invented by IBM in 1956. That's closer to their time than ours is to 1985.

[@ShamrockParticle]

@B3ro1080 How so?

[@chukchee]

My craftsman ratchet still works today, even though its about 30 years old. On the other hand, my Epson PC computer is long dead.

[@zuriel4783]

I remember being a kid and my parents getting a PC with a 4GB HDD, and wondering why anyone would ever need that much storage. I thought I was set for life. I wonder if people in 20 years from now will look at my current system with 4TB and laugh at how small it is If you're reading this in the future, feel free to say hi!

[@emendatus1]

My first pc was with 40Mb HDD.

[@kenwilliams3279]

It is awesome watching this in 2023. We got our first 486 DX33 when I was at high school in about 1993. It had 2MB RAM and 212MB hard disk storage, which all my school friends were amazed at. Now self employed, my main workstation PC has 128GB RAM and 40TB SSD storage. I've got approaching 200TB total storage just in my home office LOL

[@_henry]

"You would also treat your computer unit with care." Me: Throws phone to bed everytime.

[@raven4k998]

hey your phones built to take that shit unlike those old computers which would break on impact

[@xzendor7digitalartcreations]

This was a great show. Along with them and Byte Magazine one would learn a lot about computing.

[@mano123456]

Love this video! ... I actually still use 640 KB Double Density 3.5" floppy disks today to store my music, as my E-MU SP-1200 sampler / sequencer (1987) is the center of my studio.

[@RedLine_Renesis]

Wonderful video. The peak of humanity. No colored hair people anywhere. Just normal men and women enjoying tech.

[@XKS99]

My relatives in eastern Europe constantly referred to hard disks as "Winchesters" back in the 2000s. Now I know why.

[@petersachs764]

these guys were great and learned so much. Back then I was envious of my friend with a Gigabyte of storage. now at work I manage over a Petabyte. I also loved Byte magazine. perhaps the best publication in I.T.

[@mikecook317]

I loved Byte

[@robertgijsen]

I'm actually impressed that the design of those'85 harddisks is exactly the same as they are today. Of course a harddisk can hold more data now, but still, the design hasn't really changed. Impressive!

[@stargazer7644]

SSD: Am I a joke to you?

[@Realmasterorder]

Time Travel Computer history shows,so much innovation back then ! you got to love em :)

[@MetatroN197924]

ρε φιλε σε βρισκω σε οτι βιντεο βλεπω αχαχχαχααχχχα

[@jackilynpyzocha662]

Years later, a Tandy 1000 RLX, 20 meg hard drive, 3 1/2" floppy drive, DOS, Desk Mate, a printer, monitor, mouse, software(purchased separately) plus a three-year warranty, 1992, a faulty hard drive caused the system to jump between DOS(OS) and Desk Mate(GUI) for no apparent reason. The hard drive was replaced, no more problems!

[@NickHey]

Fascinating to look at so many different methods of data storage and how that info is portrayed to the public.

[@OthellZethus]

We truly need a boomer appreciation month. They've done so much to make ours lives easier and more enjoyable.

[@Mr_Meowingtons]

lol

[@philiptownsend4026]

Yes, three cheers for the boomers! The kids these days owe us so much yet they scoff at us.

[@garyproffitt5941]

God bless Gary Kildall - Rest in peace & he was a genius.

[@raven4k998]

meh not really Bill Gate's was the brains of the software world man

[@yougod7253]

@@raven4k998 Bill Gates stole the rights from others. Look it up

[@oddball0045]

@@raven4k998 You mean Bill Gates was the thief of the software world. CP/M was gary's invention and DOS has CPM to thank for its existence

[@belphegor_dev]

@@raven4k998 Wrong.

[@raven4k998]

@@belphegor_dev wright I mean he did shit even apple couldn't do taking things way further then those drug addicts could ever dream and beating out IBM which is amazing

[@tomdestryjr.4261]

This aired two years before I went back to school at the age of 33 to get a BS in Information Systems and start my 30-year career in IT, thanks to shows like this and my Commodore 64.

[@granolatimes7185]

this popped up in my feed this week, and i loved every minute of it. i need more of this show in my life now

[@jinggarcia]

"we're immune to head crashes". 10 years later, iomega was bugged by the "click of death."

[@AcornElectron]

Jing Garcia ah, the familiar and daunting sound of my zipdrive failing ... hard!

[@raven4k998]

they fixed the head crashing issue it's called the ssd

[@jeffwads]

That HD at 6:50 is pretty much the same basic design as today. Amazing. Several minutes to back up 10 MB data on that tape device. Wow.

[@grivello]

Its also amazing that even on an Iphone 12, the CPU- RAM- DISK model is similar. Its just that the disk is now SSD.

[@izools]

Man that guy from Priam could have aced the interview so simply... What about the reliability issues? Well let's talk about that. The drive you see before you features four very important differences separating it from the original drives offered with an IBM XT. 1. A different technique for applying the magnetic media to the platter. XT drives were coated, centrifugally, with iron oxide, essentially, rust. These platters are coated in a vacuum using a technique called "sputtering" providing a far more resilient surface. 2. Head construction. Rather than using a soft ferrite core head with a wound electromagnet this drive features thin film heads where the electromagnet is etched into stronger silicon. 3. Voice coil actuator over stepper motor actuator - not only does this vastly reduce access times it also improves reliability. Disk platters expand and contract with size which can result in tracks not being where the stepper motor expects them to be in older drives but this issue is negated with the use of a voice coil and tracking signals on the disk surface itself. 4. Auto parking. When the drive loses power the heads automatically park and land on an area of the disk not containing data, negating the need to use a park utility and reducing the risk of head / disk damage in the event of a power loss. ... He mentioned none of that 😒

[@raven4k998]

I dare you to get one of those old mass storage devices for the lulz factor and pay only 5 dollars for it to boot again for the lulz

[@keybraker]

Kildall has such a said story, so many injustices to one man..

[@henrikhyrup3995]

I remember a tech magazine from the early 90s had an article about tiny hard disks. One was the size of a dollar coin and held around 340 MB storage. "By the time you're reading this, engineers and scientists have probably come up with ideas to either: 1) cram those 340 MB into an even smaller space or 2) cram even more storage into that size disk."

[@rgbreeding]

i freaking love this show !!

[@cashrothschild1527]

I freaking hate you !!

[@MrInside20]

They got so much right about optical and magnetic media before it was even that popular. They said they would be complementary and fast forward 10 years and Windows 95 was being sold on CD-ROMs to be installed on magnetic disk drives.

[@Blarksel]

Love this old computer-stuff.. big thanks for those many -and nice- uploads! :o)

[@Ama-hi5kn]

Gary Kildall is a legend. For those of us who remember him, we know him well. I was just revisiting and playing with the GEM OS the other day.

[@Lachlant1984]

I just love the sound of the old MFM and RLL hard drives, they make such unique sounds when seeking for data.

[@justinparzival3743]

2020 : what kind of user needs 60MB storage? 2050: what kind of user needs 1TB storage?

[@bjornroesbeke]

What year are you living in? Budget laptops often come with a 1TB drive. I currently have 6 TB in my main PC alone.

[@yogithegeek]

@@bjornroesbeke meanwhile I destroyed 2tb data😂

[@georgealex19]

May they all rest in peace! Amazing show! Amazing times! 👍

[@rahezrahez]

we should be so grateful for those ppl who made our life more easier .. now u can hold a computer inside ur bucket .. god bless them

[@parishna4882]

Back in the day.... "Can you tell us how it works?" "Why yes, well you see -- elongated explanation." "I see, and can you tell us about when xyz happens?" "Well, this part does this, that part does that, and they both do their thing." "Ok, now lets look at the ... " Today.... "How does the new apple phone differ from the last one?" "Well it's got more pixels and you now have to go to an apple store for any replacements!" "AMAZING. OMG I Can't wait to get one." I prefer back in the day.

[@paulinmt2185]

Cool! My first home HDD was a Priam 14" 30MB voice-coil. That, with my Z80 CP/M system was awesome ;-). For its time and with the limitations of technology then, CP/M was brilliant. Thank you Gary! Before that it was a Tarbell floppy I/F and an 8080. Before that, a Tarbell tape I/F.

[@lrios4403]

I'm guessing you coded in cobol?

[@etshArk87]

And i was astonished about the transition from a floppy disk to a CD thinking, this is it, the CD is revolutionary and it will stay for a 100 years. Then came Blu-ray, then came Usb and Solid State. We are having 2TB Solid State Disks for about 150-200 Dollars... That was the average price for a 5.2GB or if you're lucky a 6.4GB if it was on sale in 1998. I remember because i was 10 years old back then and i needed a HDD to store some of the musics and video games me and my friend ripped off. Back then, 5GB was never ending, i mean it, it's like having about 10TB in today's storage. How times have changed... Jeez, time flies

[@costalmole280]

And to think nowadays computers have more ram than they did storage back then.

[@TonyBensonToday]

the comb over is hard to ignore, I kind of love it!

[@u.v.s.5583]

Herr Bernoulli was a great great man. RIP Daniel, you are sorely missed!

[@Andiotic]

They talk in MB, we talk in GB, in another 20+ years time we'll probably be talking in PB... Lol.

[@MaYeRsNoLife]

Andiotic TB

[@Andiotic]

Nah because terabytes are becoming quite common. A petabyte is quite plausible in that time span I've given you.

[@Phenom98]

Well... Have you heard of the 5nm limit?

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

@@Phenom98 Have you heard about Graphene which is thought to push that limit down to 1nm? :P

[@L2ggs]

@@PhoenixNL72-DEGA- There is still a limit you morons. You can't keep cramming more and more electrons in, it's called the electron field limit

[@lindaoffenbach]

Interesting series for having a peek into history. Most interestingly, they clearly understood where things were going. I've lately been given an insight in late 70s and early 80s literature about microprocessors and micro computers from the 8080 era showing that the direction of development path was clearly known from the start of the pc. That literature already talked about VSLI, 64 bits (where we are now) and 128 bits. The literature indicates that the jump towards the latter in mainstream usage will be an extremely hesitant one, explaining that benefits are almost none compared to investment needed. All the computer geniuses at the time simply knew what was possible today, and that it was a matter of 'who gets their first' by miniturisation and adding refined productive complexity to speed processing up and with a high bandwith. Evidently, all has to follow upscaling including storage space and techniques.

[@robotorch]

I'll never forget my father telling me how, in 1984 or 1985, he ordered a $6,000 PC (probably a Compaq I'd guess, or IBM) with two 40 MB HDDs at $8,000 each. That's a $22,000 workstation in those mid-80s dollars. At the time, circa 2010, in the middle of the Windows 7 era and Intel Core 2 Quad CPUs, a good PC with 4 or 8 GB of RAM was probably $1,000 and 4 TB HDDs were right around the corner at $399.99. I got to play with all sorts of late-80s toys during my childhood, and I'm a system admin today.

[@gmc9753]

"Would I as a home user, be interested in a 70MB drive?" "Probably not."

[@ericn9vjg]

Bernoulli Box looks like the ancient ancestor of Iomega Zip disks.

[@Blackadder75]

that is exactly what it was

[@sdefonta]

Especially since it was made by iomega

[@rishijai]

Interesting, never heard of it

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

@@rishijai They never really caught on because both the unit and the disks were very expensive and they had less performance then a harddrive. Most companies went the HD for storage + tape drive for backup route. Even the later ZIP and Jazz drive weren't as popular and widespread as everyone seems to think they were (they weren't all that reliable for one)

[@Gainn]

@@PhoenixNL72-DEGA- The ZIP drive was popular with musicians for a while. Transferring samples around back then on a stack of floppy disks was torture..

[@MontyGumby]

That cohost Gary Kildall is the true star of the show