iOS 17.3.1 thinking of the past.

[transmaster]

I just noted that iOS 17.3.1 is 1.83 GB's in size. My earliest PC's with 286 CPU's, had a smoking 4 megabytes of RAM. and gigantic 80 megabyte hard drives. Windows was loaded from 144 MB floppies. I now have a total of 21 TB of storage space with an Mac Studio M1 Max who spec's are astronomical in comparison. How times have changed.

 

[Reverend Benny]

Laughed about a similar thing they other day when I downloaded the latest GPU drivers for my RTX2080, just below 1gb in size.....and its a driver.

 

[Populus]

I’m a bit younger, I think, and when I was a kid, hard drives were 20 or 40GB. But I think my first hard drive, on an old PC I inherited, was 1,56GB.

By the way, the complete ISO of iOS 17 is between 7 and 8GB depending on the device.

Yeah, technology has progressed at an outstanding pace during the few past years…

 

[I7guy]

The first computer I worked on I entered the bootstrap via the switch register, had paper tape and the disk drive was 40,000 bytes and large and heavy.

 

[transmaster]

The first computer I worked on I entered the bootstrap via the switch register, had paper tape and the disk drive was 40,000 bytes and large and heavy.

Yes I worked with punch cards and paper tape in the beginning.

 

[CTHarrryH]

My first Apple device had 16 KB of memory and that was after an upgrade - didn't have data storage that was on a cassette tape drive. Dealer wanted to know why I needed 16K of memory

 

[transmaster]

I well remember the 1st 1 GB HDD we marveled at its capacity we wisely looked at each other saying the drive would wear out before you could fill it up. The drive cost $1,850 USD. I now have a flash drive about the size of a stick of chewing gum with many times that capacity. SanDisk has a 256 GB flash drive for $34 bucks

 

[krspkbl]

In which year did you have 4MB RAM, 80MB drive, and install windows from a floppy disk?

Don't you think it's not fair to compare modern tech to something from the 90s (or even 80's lol) ?

Today consumer/enthusiast devices use 16-128GB RAM, have 8-32 cores, we have super fast (<11.7GB/s) SSD drives with 4-8TB, and windows can take ~50GB. Physical media is dead. You'd need a blu ray disc to install Windows these days (yes i know installation media can only require ~8GB and even that is way more than the capacity of a floppy disk)

Time moves on and so should you. Yeah it's interesting to compare how things have changed. Key word here being "changed".

1.83GB update is nothing. Be thankful you don't play games (or do you?) where updates can be in the ten's of GB.

What is your internet speed?

Laughed about a similar thing they other day when I downloaded the latest GPU drivers for my RTX2080, just below 1gb in size.....and its a driver.

Nvidia drivers are quite bloated but 1GB is actually not bad.

I have a 4080 and the latest driver is 634MB. Not quite 1GB...

Edit: my previous card was also a 2080. that driver is also 634MB so not "just below 1GB". Maybe if it was 850-950MB I'd agree with you.

 

[sparksd]

The first computer I worked on I entered the bootstrap via the switch register, had paper tape and the disk drive was 40,000 bytes and large and heavy.

Yeah, those were the days. Retired s/w & h/w engineer here, started in '71. Got to work with the early versions of ARPANET, sending msgs via low-baud teletype.

 

[I7guy]

Yeah, those were the days. Retired s/w & h/w engineer here, started in '71. Got to work with the early versions of ARPANET, sending msgs via low-baud teletype.

I started in ‘73 and still going strong. I worked on the first prototype in the world of a blood glucose monitoring system in the 70s.

 

[Reverend Benny]

Nvidia drivers are quite bloated but 1GB is actually not bad.

I have a 4080 and the latest driver is 634MB. Not quite 1GB...

Edit: my previous card was also a 2080. that driver is also 634MB so not "just below 1GB". Maybe if it was 850-950MB I'd agree with you.

Yea, true. prob better to say just above 1/2 gb these days, I remember they used to be larger but seem to have shrunken in size.

 

[sparksd]

I started in ‘73 and still going strong. I worked on the first prototype in the world of a blood glucose monitoring system in the 70s.

I desperately wanted an Altair 8800 back then but couldn't afford it - about $3K in today's dollars. I would have splurged for the upgrade to 8K of memory. I worked on spacecraft and missiles with on-board computers that we hoarded every available byte in machine language. Amazing how far we've come.

A great book on those times - "Computing in the Middle Ages: A View From the Trenches 1955-1983"

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1403315175

 

[transmaster]

I desperately wanted an Altair 8800 back then but couldn't afford it - about $3K in today's dollars. I would have splurged for the upgrade to 8K of memory. I worked on spacecraft and missiles with on-board computers that we hoarded every available byte in machine language. Amazing how far we've come.

A great book on those times - "Computing in the Middle Ages: A View From the Trenches 1955-1983"

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1403315175

The whole Y2K thing was a result of this. up until that time computers dates had a 2 digit year, the worry was the computer would not understand 00 as a year. I spent new years 2000 in the Wyoming Emergency management com center with fellow ham radio operators just in case something happened, which of course it didn't.

 

[transmaster]

I desperately wanted an Altair 8800 back then but couldn't afford it - about $3K in today's dollars. I would have splurged for the upgrade to 8K of memory. I worked on spacecraft and missiles with on-board computers that we hoarded every available byte in machine language. Amazing how far we've come.

A great book on those times - "Computing in the Middle Ages: A View From the Trenches 1955-1983"

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1403315175

Have fun! https://s2js.com/altair/

 

[sparksd]

Have fun! https://s2js.com/altair/

lol - I had seen this before and a great idea. But I haven't done real code in over 25 years, the last being the Nav s/w for an "advanced aircraft"; I moved into Mission Systems Architecture and large-scale integration.

Here in Seattle, we have an outstanding computer museum ("Living Computers") but it's been closed since the start of the COVID crisis. I wish it would open again before I go "end of life" like all that gear I worked with.