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Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

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Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#61

Post by dcminter »

sprior wrote: post #3

I buy Computer Shopper for the articles - said no one ever.

I used to buy the British edition at least partially for the articles, but it could be a damned hard slog finding them.

In fact a lot of the computer magazines tended in this direction - presumably the consolidation around the PC and the commoditization of it ate into margins as they all focused on the one (albeit growing) narrower topic.

By the by, I often joke that I buy The Economist for the pictures (not true, but the captions are often very sly jokes).

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#62

Post by dcminter »

russellbeattie wrote: post #39

When I was in college in 1991, I used to get Computer Shopper and spend hours scouring it for a laptop (not a common thing then). I wanted one so bad, but was sooo broke you can't even imagine. There were always random resellers getting rid of old laptops and I'd spend hours trying to figure out which one I might get. "That 286 with the flip-up half-screen black and white liquid crystal display is relatively cheap...…

I find myself doing this with modern configurators from e.g. System76 even though I have no earthly use for such an over-powered system.

The Maplin Catalogue back in the day was my choice for idle window-shopping; one could page through it for the components of some very castles in the sky imagined diy computer or gadget - none of which I could have successfully built even if I'd had the budget. Top nerd nostalgia.

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#63

Post by snthd »

I thought the point in debinding was to use an autofeeder - to make the actual scanning less labor intensive.

Wouldn't a camera based scanner be better? It still requires manual page turning, but will save on the prep work and destroying the magazines, even if just to sell on.

The paper and ink quality will present they're own issues, but maybe those will be quicker to solve than the debinding and page feeding process.

https://archive.org/details/tabletopscribesystem

https://twitter.com/internetarchive/status/13580909821897195...

https://blog.archive.org/2021/02/09/meet-eliza-zhang-book-sc...

https://www.diybookscanner.org/

The effort here to preserve history though is incredible.

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#64

Post by miroljub »

mindcrime wrote: post #14

This... is fugging amazing. No, seriously. It really is. Those of you who are too young to remember the heyday of Computer Shopper won't get it (probably) but that magazine was ... well, as the article says, practically a "bible" to some of us. There was NOTHING like finding the new issue on the news-stand, buying it, and rushing home to pore over the ads, looking for a sweet new motherboard, some RAM, maybe a Sound…

[flagged]

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#65

Post by henrikschroder »

_yb2s wrote: post #23
lr4444lr wrote: post #8

Considering the prices adjusted for inflation, and how little computers could do out of the box beyond the business applications they were designed for in that era, it was really quite an expensive hobby to be a hacker!

I can't even wrap my head around some of these prices... One of those pages for "February 1986" has an ad for "diskettes" box of 10 priced between $1195 and $2995. Are these what I think they are, regular floppy disks for almost $300 each? Edit: that must have been a typo, I see prices in the same issue of about $1/disk.

I got an Atari STE in 1988, it used double-sided regular density 3.5" disks, with a capability of 720kB each, and back then it was a bargain to find no-name ones for ~$1, while the quality name-brand ones (Verbatim! Maxell!) cost about the double.

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#67

Post by jhbadger »

CuriousSkeptic wrote: post #55
glotchimo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever asked what period I (a proverbial young person, SWE) would go back to if I had a time machine, I always answer with roughly this period. To be alive during those days to see the development of the shoulders I now stand on would be such a treat, as I’m sure anecdotes like these only scratch the surface of all the stories to be told. That said, if any of you oldheads have links to such things, do share - alway…

I think this book captures a good bit of the spirit https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/984598.Masters_of_Decept...

Eh, while the media seemed to be into "hackers" in the sense of people breaking into systems (and either messing them up or just to do it for bragging rights), that wasn't what most of us were into -- instead we were interested in writing software to get the most of the hardware we had (and used "hacker" in the old-school sense of expert coders).

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#68

Post by elaus »

bane wrote: post #29
mindcrime wrote: post #14

This... is fugging amazing. No, seriously. It really is. Those of you who are too young to remember the heyday of Computer Shopper won't get it (probably) but that magazine was ... well, as the article says, practically a "bible" to some of us. There was NOTHING like finding the new issue on the news-stand, buying it, and rushing home to pore over the ads, looking for a sweet new motherboard, some RAM, maybe a Sound…

I've said it before, The IA is a crown jewel of the internet. But now I'll add "and God Bless Jason Scott". This might be one of the most important historical pricing repositories that track tech trends ever produced when it's done. Imagine tracking the weekly per-MB prices of hard drives or even more volatile DRAM from 1979 to 2009. And then there's tracking the emergence and transition between technologies, correla…

I was skimming though the pages of this issue from 1986 and thought how those prices for hardware seem fairly reasonable. But looking it up, the inflation since 1986 was ~176%, so 1 USD back then equals about 2.76 today.

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#69

Post by akudha »

bane wrote: post #29
mindcrime wrote: post #14

This... is fugging amazing. No, seriously. It really is. Those of you who are too young to remember the heyday of Computer Shopper won't get it (probably) but that magazine was ... well, as the article says, practically a "bible" to some of us. There was NOTHING like finding the new issue on the news-stand, buying it, and rushing home to pore over the ads, looking for a sweet new motherboard, some RAM, maybe a Sound…

I've said it before, The IA is a crown jewel of the internet. But now I'll add "and God Bless Jason Scott". This might be one of the most important historical pricing repositories that track tech trends ever produced when it's done. Imagine tracking the weekly per-MB prices of hard drives or even more volatile DRAM from 1979 to 2009. And then there's tracking the emergence and transition between technologies, correla…

I work very long hours for the Internet Archive, and I am making a huge difference in the world working for them. It wouldn’t be right or useful for me to take on any other job. I also don’t want to be doing something like making “stuff” that I sell or otherwise speculate into some market. Leave aside I have these documentaries to finish, and time has to be short.

from http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5251

In a world where people are rushing to pump out AI generated content, polluting the internet, all for a buck - people like Jason also exist. What a gem of a person!

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#70

Post by zem »

pmontra wrote: post #58
mindcrime wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a Thomas Guide was about as thick as 8 or 9 J.C. Whitney catalogs.

Another set of imperial units unknown to us Europeans? :-) How tick was that, a couple of inches / 5 cm?

1/2000 of a football field, give or take
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