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10 Incredible Old Computer Ads

2spare.com — 300 Mbytes for under $20,000 oh those were the days!

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  • Tinu, on 01/17/2008, -24/+5lol
  • jakv5, on 01/17/2008, -48/+4Nice mutton chops on the Radio Shack salesman!
    • Buelldozer, on 01/17/2008, -3/+65That "Radio Shack salesman" is ***ISAAC ASMIOV*** you moron!
    • ibanezdtx120, on 01/17/2008, -0/+43Dude...That's the great Isaac Asimov
      • cosmicr, on 01/17/2008, -0/+3Anyone else notice the article spells it Assimov?
        • Fracture98, on 01/17/2008, -0/+3And Issac.

          I shed a tear. The man was a god.
          • Tomchei, on 01/17/2008, -0/+1Gods don't die. He still lives on via his work.
    • Neiby, on 01/17/2008, -1/+35Holy cow.... I hate to use these words, but "epic fail" certainly fits here.
      • ULJarad, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1Hardly. Had it failed we wouldn't be conversing over these fine Internet tubes.
    • edwartica, on 01/17/2008, -0/+18Holy crap, is that computer hooked up to a tv? I totally forgot we used to do that!
      • Dubbsacc, on 01/17/2008, -0/+8We stopped?

        Mine is hooked up to a TV...
      • bchecket, on 01/17/2008, -3/+1I bought a Visio 20" just for that purpose. Works great. Cheaper than a cinema display.
      • fstorino, on 01/18/2008, -0/+3My first computer stored data on a cassette tape!
        We had to hit "play" and type the "CLOAD" command to load the programs on it. It had to load one by one, sequentially (obviously), until we find the one we wanted. Pure nostalgia...
  • badwithcomputer, on 01/17/2008, -3/+59i will buy any light beer or consumer electronics that has elvira endorsing it.
    • ethanpack, on 01/17/2008, -4/+4If I could digg your comment up for each one of her boobs, I would.
    • Caai07, on 01/17/2008, -0/+1Boing
    • Elranzer, on 01/17/2008, -0/+6(Double) dugg for Elvira. I doubt she understood anything she "said" in that ad.
    • lukeduke, on 01/17/2008, -0/+3Now, she's old....probably appearing in geriartric weekly advertising the new geritol.
  • tommycruiser, on 01/17/2008, -4/+50The guy with the mutton chops is world-famous sci-fi author Isaac Asimov.
    • TheAngryMob, on 01/17/2008, -1/+41Wow, just like the caption says! You must have like ESPN or something.
    • EgonWest, on 01/17/2008, -6/+1Look again; according to the caption, it's Isaac ASSimov!
      • Sneezyx, on 01/17/2008, -1/+3Look again, again: It's ISSac ASSimov!
    • gak001, on 01/17/2008, -0/+12I guess he was like... "Hmm, the coffers seem to be a little low. Shall I write another amazing, award-winning series? Man, I don't really feel like it - how about I just smile for a picture?"
    • forcedfx, on 01/17/2008, -1/+1How did you know?
    • woohhaa, on 01/17/2008, -11/+1He died from the AIDS.
      • woohhaa, on 01/18/2008, -1/+1I'm serious. Issac Assimov was a great author and he died from AIDS. Wtf is wrong with you people?
    • Urusai, on 01/17/2008, -0/+6He's plugging my first computer there. Those were the days, 16k RAM and BASIC, saving programs to a tape deck.
      • Fracture98, on 01/17/2008, -0/+7Those were the days. A 45 minute wait to see "LOAD ERROR".
  • Error601, on 01/17/2008, -1/+71Funny...when I saw that my first thought was, "how many youngins won't know that's Isaac Asimov."
    • wespadfield, on 01/17/2008, -0/+12(shakes head)...kids these days...
    • midoritsuru, on 01/17/2008, -0/+32Maybe twenty years from now we'll be looking at old Vista ads saying, "how many youngins won't know that's Bill Gates?" lol
      • Cupantae, on 01/17/2008, -3/+16Yeah, but we will realise that no one ever thought Vista was advanced technology
        • angrykeyboarder, on 02/18/2008, -0/+1It depends on how you define "advanced". It's vastly superior to its' predecessors (although I prefer Linux myself. I'm dual-boot boy.)
      • edzilla, on 01/17/2008, -3/+9Actually, comparing Asimov to Gates is a major blasphemy...
    • whatthefu, on 01/17/2008, -0/+11How can you not recognize Asimov's mutton chops?
      • Fracture98, on 01/17/2008, -0/+12They were Peltier Cooling Fins. His brain was over-clocked.
    • OhSn4p, on 01/17/2008, -0/+2Are you one of the dealers from The Wire?
    • KniteWulf, on 01/17/2008, -2/+3I was expecting Harry Seldon.
    • dante2010xxx, on 01/17/2008, -4/+0Anyone that can read will know who it is.

      U R SO SMRT!!!
    • wezman2k, on 01/17/2008, -0/+3i didn't know that was isaac asimov, but i knew who asimov was. just never bothered to see a photo of him, didn't need to.

      "the last question" is incredible
    • GergMeister, on 01/17/2008, -0/+3better yet, how many youngins never heard of Isaac Asimov?
    • jiveturkeyblues, on 01/18/2008, -0/+4honestly, i don't tend to look at photographs of authors..
  • sbrown, on 01/17/2008, -15/+1Wow, these computer ads are sure old!
  • Cupantae, on 01/17/2008, -0/+10At the time, there must have been loads of people convinced that development will stop soon. Surely we can't get any better than 300,000,000 bytes!
  • Shambla, on 01/17/2008, -0/+39Electronic....mail?
    • spect3r, on 01/17/2008, -1/+14Yeah, it's this new thing being coined "e-mail". I just got mine yesterday. Comes packaged with this neat "COMPUSERV" software that allows me to post on these fangled "bulletin boards" and look up my stock prices on this intranet that functions through, get this, MY PHONE LINE!!! It's E-MAZING.
      • Fracture98, on 01/17/2008, -0/+1CompuServe. And I still remember my password: BANANA*WORLD
      • potterboy, on 01/17/2008, -0/+1A actually found a set of CompuServe disks the other day.
    • burgerpocket, on 01/17/2008, -0/+5if it's as frightening as the ad makes it out to be, i don't want it.
  • searcade, on 01/17/2008, -4/+34"The new 16K RAM card that turns your computer into a working giant"
    • Buelldozer, on 01/17/2008, -0/+5I remember when I got the 16K RAM expander for my Vic-20. Good stuff!
    • BurnTees, on 01/17/2008, -3/+7um, yes, thank you, i read that in the article.
    • xieodeluxed, on 07/07/2008, -0/+2not sure why you're being dugg up, thats just a quote from the article
  • lalop, on 01/17/2008, -7/+2what happened to the MS adds? I get a 404
  • basic0, on 01/17/2008, -6/+8"Microsoft Excel. The soul of the new machines. And the heart of a business solution that will make as much sense five years from now as it does today."

    Ah good, five years from now it still won't make any sense.
    • TomFrost, on 01/17/2008, -1/+14Did you see the design of that ad? Cut the serifs off the font, and holy crap, that's a modern Apple ad look. Way to be, 1987 Microsoft.
  • Julirocks, on 01/17/2008, -7/+15Bill Gates is so sexy.
    • edwartica, on 01/17/2008, -10/+3So tempted to use the "Report it" function on you right now, cause that's just plain offensive!
    • dotlizard, on 01/17/2008, -0/+3yeah, if you think he's hot there, you should see the Bill Gates that visits my dreams from time to time. soooooooooo hot.
    • felyduw, on 01/18/2008, -1/+3Bill Gates' money is so sexy.
      There, fixed that for you ;)
  • ufia, on 01/17/2008, -1/+49A 16-bit microprocessor will ***** get you laid. Chicks dig it!
  • minnymoo, on 01/17/2008, -1/+38"Two Bytes Are Better Than One"
    -damn, that's the perfect porno ^_^
    • Neorio, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1Two bytes, one computer?
    • likwidfuzion, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1We know he got laid that night. Twice. Within a 2-minute span.
    • whothehellareyu, on 01/18/2008, -0/+2"Time to insert my hard drive into your floppy"
  • gottoflyhigh, on 01/17/2008, -1/+36Wow, we have come so far. Two thirds down the page is a "fart button"
  • borez, on 01/17/2008, -1/+19Dugg for Bill Gates being a style icon.
    • MacEnvy, on 01/17/2008, -0/+2I still can't believe they gave him a photo spread in Tiger Beat.
  • ParanoidDizzy, on 01/17/2008, -0/+12Dugg for the ever-so-random Elvira/LBMS tie-in. What the hell where they thinking?
    • edwartica, on 01/17/2008, -0/+5Elvira was advertising anything and everything in those days. I think I once saw an ad where she advertised a radiation suit!
  • WickedOwl, on 01/17/2008, -0/+17"RadioShack: Issac Assimov featuring a color computer (1982)"

    Come on, man. Don't make that kind of spelling error. Not for that guy.
    • unicronband, on 01/17/2008, -2/+17 It's actually Isaac Assimov the porn star, not Isaac Asimov the author. Common mistake though.
    • gghost, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1Yeah I know! It's meant to be "colour"!
  • orangetiki, on 01/17/2008, -0/+8Dugg for the Tandy reference. that was my first computer. No hard drive, 19.2 modem (external), 5.1/4 disk standard 3.5 disk external, How I miss the days of keeping a rolodex with phone numbers to dial BBS-es to find out about when and where people are playing paintball. Paintball was real paintball back in the day also. None of that inflatable "speedball" junk.
    • TheAngryFatMan, on 01/17/2008, -0/+019.2 modem on a Tandy? 300 or 1200 maybe.
    • SkippyDoorknob, on 01/17/2008, -0/+2The glory days of Radio Shack...
    • ellisgl, on 01/18/2008, -0/+2No some how he went really old school and went below the 300 baud mark.... even the 110 and 50.. Ah 300 Baud on a terminal that was awesome. Having to know your at command set..

      I miss BBS's.
  • dmoney22, on 01/17/2008, -7/+1the Fart Button
    O
    press it.
    you know you want to.
    • XxLindyxX, on 01/17/2008, -2/+0Who could resist the call of the Fart Button?
  • fluberjit, on 01/17/2008, -0/+3i got a 10mb 2ft long HDD in my office but it is broke and will only run at 5MB, but that cost about £15K when it first came out
  • stopsucking, on 01/17/2008, -0/+2"Two bytes are better than one". Are you listening crazy t-shirt web company? Get on it!
  • samuelcotterall, on 01/17/2008, -1/+2I'm amazed how much technobabble those ads contain.
  • joeconway, on 01/17/2008, -3/+13NO I DO NOT WANT TO PRESS THE FART BUTTON.
  • DiscoLando, on 01/17/2008, -0/+1Those Maxim and Fuel ads sure take me down memory lane!
  • Mr.Gone, on 01/17/2008, -7/+3Digg headline from 2028: "Top 10 web ads that remind us how retarded the internet was in 2008."

    The after: "Mr.Gone relected for record 4th term, "What constitution?" Lord Gone asks."

    Woo! bring on the future~
  • DRGinLBC, on 01/17/2008, -1/+1DUG for me making me believe the second picture down was part of the article...when it was a hot chick pointing to maxim.com
  • manbear, on 01/17/2008, -0/+2I didn't realize Diesel makes computers?
  • Elizar, on 01/17/2008, -0/+3with 16k ram ill be flying through those internet tubes so fast!!!
  • diggmc, on 01/17/2008, -0/+8Dug for Isaac Asimov pimping Radio Shack's CoCo 1, Model III and the Model II (with it's 8" drives). God I remember seeing those ad's in Byte magazine.
  • riverstyx, on 01/17/2008, -1/+2Reminds me of the "Get the big disk you've been waiting for" ad that hit the site a while back. Something about a 10mb drive for like 3 grand. There was a phone number on it for the company and a lot of the people on here swamped it out with calls, and it was just some random guy's home phone.
    Someone even photoshopped it to say "Get the big dick you've been waiting for", didn't surprise me at all.
  • hiro, on 01/17/2008, -1/+3Dugg for Elvira!
  • mancat, on 01/17/2008, -0/+6It's a pleasure to see the Cromemco 16K memory board advertisement. I have several of these boards, still in their factory shipping boxes. I have a fully working Cromemco System 2 running Cromemco's ancient Unix variant "Cromix." It's so old that most of the Unix command names had to be changed in order to avoid AT&T prosecution. It has a whopping 384KB of memory, no hard drive, no network interface, and interactive through a greenscreen Zenith Z-29 terminal.

    The system - all software, all manuals, everything - was "found" in my grandma's basement a couple years ago. She was going to have it thrown out. Apparently one of my long-deceased uncles was a software developer at Boeing in the late '70s and early '80s and was involved in some military contracts. Lots of these things ended up being bolted into racks on board Navy ships and even found their way onto B-52s.
  • toddhenkel, on 01/17/2008, -0/+1Bill Gates touting the virtues of the Tandy 2000!! It was actually advanced for the day with it's graphics capabilities though I forget he specs. But it was also overpriced and worse not compatible with a significant amount of PC software at the time. Most units seemed to end up as each store's office computer than in customer hands.
    • PhillyMJS, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1Yep, and Jon Shirley was the Tandy exec who ordered a ramp-up in production, at Gates' urging (it was the only computer that ran early versions of Windows with acceptable speed).

      When it turned out to be an expensive bomb, Shirley left Tandy in a hurry and landed title of President at Microsoft, probably as more of an apology for ruining his career at Tandy than anything else.
  • TheWorm, on 01/17/2008, -3/+9And someday people will scoff at 3000 for a 64gb flash based Macbook Air....wait, they already do.
    • postalblowfish7, on 01/17/2008, -2/+1feel better about your computing choices yet? kk, cause i'm fine with mine.
    • bjs3171, on 01/17/2008, -2/+2wasn't it $1800 yesterday?
      • sekhui, on 01/17/2008, -0/+2not for the flash drive version, i believe.
      • potterboy, on 01/17/2008, -0/+264gb flash is a $999 upgrade. Sorry, I accidentally dugg you up.
  • Bhatch514, on 01/17/2008, -0/+3I printed them for my office.
  • andywebb95, on 01/17/2008, -0/+2Dugg for "two bytes are better than one"
  • Nerfdude, on 01/17/2008, -0/+3alternate title: "things from 20 years ago are not as advanced as things from now"
  • RyomaNagare, on 01/17/2008, -0/+22 Bytes are better than one, on other news; two cores are better than a single core, and 8 cores are better than 2 and 4.
    ...gosh, marketing sure has come far in this 20 years!
  • x0epyon0x, on 01/17/2008, -0/+3Elvira is wielding the most impractical chainsaw I have ever seen.
  • chr00t, on 01/17/2008, -0/+1I love the look of the guy on for Honeywell's "What the heck is electronic email?" add. Sadly, I still see those types of users!
  • decilios, on 01/17/2008, -0/+1I actually had that TV in the Radio Shack ad... No joke either...
  • daxsymbiont, on 01/17/2008, -1/+2when you're an old fart and kids laugh at you for the technology of today you'll say those jokes aren't funny.
  • bjs3171, on 01/17/2008, -0/+1i've never heard of the "take the dumb blonde test" computer. was that some commodore product?
  • Inquisition, on 01/17/2008, -0/+1Dugg.
    But I just spent 12K and I only got 70 MB!!!
    Waaaaaa!
  • speedk0re, on 01/17/2008, -2/+4yeah but can they run doom?
  • bingobongony, on 01/17/2008, -6/+1Yeah...we GET it! Tings cost a lot back then. Gotcha. Now, can we stop with these bi-monthly "Look at how much 100 Meg cost 20 year sago!" submission!.
  • christophelyon, on 01/17/2008, -0/+2I remember around 1988, most of people considered that "everything that can be invented has been invented".

    I one day on a TV game show, one of the candidates was asked what was her job, she answered that she was working at the patent office. The show host made fun of her, saying "What the hell are you doing in such a place ? There isn't anything left to invent in our days ! Are you just sitting there all day doing nothing ?". And the worse part, she answered "You're true, but there are still some new improvements in the nuclear domain sometimes..."
    • Metasquares, on 01/17/2008, -0/+3Some people still believe this. Truly original invention these days might be hard... but it never was and never will be impossible.
  • TechyLah, on 01/17/2008, -0/+1I put off getting me one of those new-fangled machines for 40 years, son.
    Now I bought one and
    I can't get the darn footpedal to work good, and that automatic coffee holder keeps spilling things!
  • oneredeye, on 01/17/2008, -0/+1I actually have the same desk that's in the Honeywell email ad.
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