ryanr's Journal: The future is already here

"the future is already here--it's just unevenly distributed." -- William Gibson (So I hear, I haven't researched it myself.)

So Saturday, I'm driving around (see previous JE about where I was driving to/from.) And I see some billboard with an ad for memory cards. And I got to thinking about storage technology.

You know, it wasn't that long ago that such a thing was firmly science fiction. I mean like Star Trek stuff. A plastic card that you insert into your computer console that holds a billion bytes. Perhaps a "data storage crystal".

We tend to call them things like a "1GB SD card." Made out of a silicon crystal.

Curmudgeon Mode:

When I was your age, I used to have to install 9 chips, by hand, directly in the motherboard JUST to get an extra 16K! And I was happy to have it! I was lucky if I didn't break off a pin, or impale my hand!

16k

[turg]

The memory expansion unit for our TS1000 (which boosted it from 2 kB to 16 kB) was about the size of an entire digital camera these days.

Re:16k

[ryanr]

Yep, stuff gets smaller and faster. Current CPUs are in the neighborhood of 4000-10000 times faster than my first machine, and have about 16000 times more RAM, and have around a couple of million times the non-volatile storage. It's pretty cool, actually. About the same amount of absolute dollars, too.

memory

[orange_6]

I remember the first time I bought RAM for my 486...$175 for 4 1Mb SIMMs...ahhh...wish I still had that computer, it was sweet (for 1994)

Re:memory

[ryanr]

Yeah, the 1GB for the iBook was about $175. :)