My First PC

I found the receipt for the first PC my father bought this last weekend. They are in the process of significant downsizing, and while I don’t want to uselessly clutter up my own space with things that were in their garage, having a PC in my home for my final years of high school affected my entire life.

How much did you pay for your first PC and enough software to make it useful?

My father paid $6512.45 in 1983.

This was for a 64k PC running DOS 2.0, a word processor, and a printer.

MicroAge Computer Store IBM PC Invoice Page 1

MicroAge Computer Store IBM PC Invoice Page 2

The Hayes 1200bps Smart Modem alone cost $699.00.

This machine had two 360k floppy drives. I ran a bulletin board system that booted and ran from one floppy drive, and stored files available for download on the second drive.A box of 10 360k floppy disks cost $50.

The printer adapter was not built into the machine and had to be purchased separately for $150. One extravagance he purchased was the microbuffer for $349 that went in-line between the computer and printer, allowing the computer to send more of its print job to the microbuffer and the microbuffer would feed the printer at the speed it could accept it. This was long before anyone would think about using multitasking in a home computer, or even think that printing might be a separate task.