[SGVLUG] 486s came with about 8 to 16Mb of RAM?...

[David Lawyer]

On Thu, May 25, 2006 at 04:14:33PM -0700, Michael Proctor-Smith wrote:
> 
> My first 486 had 1M of memory because I could not afford more and I
> knew I could easily upgrade memory when I had more money. But I
> believe the 486 had a 32bit address bus so it could theoretically
> support 2GB of memory but of coarse at $50,000 per MB not many people
			       course                GB

You mean $50,000 per GB.  However, my first computer with a Motorola
68000 chip (and Unix-like OS --got it for free) had large memory cards
with 256k bytes/card at over $1000 per 256k in the early 1980's.  So
that's about $5,000 per MB or $5 million/GB.  Considering inflation
it's effectively much more.

This brings up another quasi-related topic, the real rate of
inflation.  The gov't underestimates it by claiming that computers
have gone way down in price for the same capabilities.  Thus they can
pay less interest on their "inflation protected" bonds.

			David Lawyer