It is tempting to spend a lot of time in this article marveling over how small and cheap computer storage has gotten versus the old days. In the 1980

What's In Store? - by Mad Ned - The Mad Ned Memo

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2021-08-04 12:30:04

It is tempting to spend a lot of time in this article marveling over how small and cheap computer storage has gotten versus the old days. In the 1980’s when I worked for Digital Equipment Corporation, my first job was to design memories for a mainframe computer. The system we were building could theoretically have up to 1GB of memory, but we laughed at this idea at the time, because it would require multiple refrigerator-sized cabinets and millions of dollars to build it, and who needs a gigabyte of memory, anyway?

Now of course, a USB drive in the back of your desk drawer that is only 1GB gets thrown out for being too small, and a suitable replacement can be found for under $10 at the supermarket checkout stand. I think though that is all the time I’ll devote to talking about this remarkable progression. Although it still boggles my mind every time I think about the comparison, it’s a thoroughly covered topic.

Instead I wanted to rewind even further back, and look at storage systems that are even older than the (admittedly old) stuff I usually write about. Some of these I’ve actually used, but some I’ve just learned about over the years.