It is odd how it works and they are holding stuff back now ... about 5 ears ago the tech was mastered for LED screen materials .. so you can get a mobile that it pretty much a credit card and bendy or a sheet of a4 that is a tablet and flexible / rollable .. .. so even now we are holding back .. Like hydrogen fuel cells (which could cheaply power server centres for computing but don't lol) .. .some dude in 50's (I think period) made a hydrogen powered car. Everyone tried to bury it.. Think gov got hold of it in end for cash... buried it fully. Funny thing is the US Embassy in London UK runs on a Hydrogen Fuel cell lolol !!

So it's a bit like that really. I think if you have enough money you can have anything ..

We get what can be produced to maximum profit suppose ..

I think early computing days also a lot of it was secure systems for military and busines and also very expensive and when It got to homes it was pushing the tech in that field. Not sure why they didn't team up with the TV industry further ! Maybe it was just the usage in inception though I think ..

[en.wikipedia.org]

this is funny !!! HAL off 2010 lololol

Think you are right though the externals & component parts are still just that .. I have never seen a computer out of a shop configured for audio for amazing sound say .. suppose its seen as more DIY .. certainly for me that is the best bit.. I spend too much on a MAC laptop then instantly unscrew it and jack up memory .. drives.. anything I can lol !! I own a computer about 5 mins usually before its in bits unless I built it anyway ..

I think you are right .. could be a whole market in itself to be honest .. computers with various configurations .. its only available through specialists currently !!

We get fair shit now lol !! but when you have the S8 edge but could have a bendy phone, thin as a card with a wire to a batt pack.. it could be much better even now !!

Beautifully crap! hahaha!!! but at the time NASA grade awesome!

Wow !! that is a memory!

Wasn't that cool. 5 hours to install a program. Good times!

@jeffy Yeh tape storage ahhhhhhhhhh !!!

Excellent I never used this version much !! Made me smile seeing it !!

Similar set up for my first as well... I do remember thinking, "20 Meg hard drive! It'll take me years to fill that sucker up!"

I bet that was serious at the time!!

[en.wikipedia.org]

I loved this .. we took it out of the case.. was a nice stainless case but it went in wooden box with lots of case fans extra .. extra cpu cooling - it came with games cartridges so was almost a console computer cross and held a true speech synthesis engine .. you could type speech in basic and it would talk away at you !!

I truly loved this machine it was way ahead for the 80's really.. The cartidges were a kind of SSD or early flash drive in a sense.. You could wipe the games and with the softs reprogram the cartridges with anything you wanted to .. So you could use them as a kinda extra massive snap in rom drive really !!

Really was a lovely toy. One of the first Macs was first but that went (wish still had it but was dads lol) ..

[en.wikipedia.org] this got recased too with extra cooling and a eprom burner later on !

Loved this too it was infinitely ram expandable / Ran a teleprinter like a old modem. Was 8 bit haha ... all those old audio tunes on the softs then were funny ..

I loved some of the old machines .. That first era was the most exciting though I think.

We all saw the moon landing and what they used then the same boxes were in our houses and although they didn't seem impressive to a modern mobile phone at that time they were space age !

Orange writing haha!! awesome .. think first monitor I had was a green backed one with white writing !! massive pixels !! size of matcheads .. much fun !