Do you remember Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor column in Byte magazine and in particular his tales of Zeke and Zeke II, the S-100 systems on which he wrote fiction and did other pro tasks through the late 1980s. In 1979 he described the original Zeke in onComputing magazine:
Cromemco Z-80 CPU 64K RAM iCOM 8-inch dual floppy drive
Two 15-inch displays Memorex keyboard Diablo 1620 printer
This cost him USA$12,000. Assuming that's 1979 money, USA$55,000 in 2026. For a 64K system. "Glitches and all, this is so much faster than work on a typewriter that there's no comparison; I estimate that it saves me several months each year; months I can use for travel, or reading, or plain loafing."
S-100 systems aren't remembered the way other 1977 computers are, even though people were doing real work on them.
Summer 1979 onComputing magazine including Pournelle article : https://archive.org/details/197907OnComputingPremiereIssue
Cromemco Z-80 CPU 64K RAM iCOM 8-inch dual floppy drive
Two 15-inch displays Memorex keyboard Diablo 1620 printer
This cost him USA$12,000. Assuming that's 1979 money, USA$55,000 in 2026. For a 64K system. "Glitches and all, this is so much faster than work on a typewriter that there's no comparison; I estimate that it saves me several months each year; months I can use for travel, or reading, or plain loafing."
S-100 systems aren't remembered the way other 1977 computers are, even though people were doing real work on them.
Summer 1979 onComputing magazine including Pournelle article : https://archive.org/details/197907OnComputingPremiereIssue
