How much did it cost to get a new computer in 1986? That was 25 years ago. Well, I was just starting out on my computer career and my enthusiasm for computers was unrestrained. I had already owned a Mac, now called a Mac Classic. I bought it for $1500 and used it for a month or so then turned around and sold it for $1800. With that cash I was starting to think of buying a “Clone” IBM AT.
The AT stood for Advanced Technology. That was what IBM was selling at the Time. Recall that IBM came out with the IBM PC 5150. Still very collectible today. Then followed up with IBM PC/XT which allowed higher amounts of RAM – all the way to 640KB if I recall correctly — and the possibility of a 10 megabyte hard drive. IBM for some unknown reason keep referring to the hard drives as DASD. Pronounced DAZZ DEE.
Anyway. if I recall correctly, you could expand PCs or a base 256K XT to 640K with a AST 6-PACK. I think that was what it was called. IBM was now selling the AT. It had an 8086 processor (the PC and XT’s had an 8088) and came with a whopping 1 Megabyte of RAM. That was HUGE in 1986 considering that DOS only used 640K. But, there where all kinds of uses for that extra 384K of RAM. Remember “Terminate and Stay Resident” programs? Of course you do. Those programs where allowed to stay “resident” in the upper memory of the 384K. That way they didn’t take up much of the 640K.
Recall, that there wasn’t anything like caching or paging in those days so if the program took 400K of RAM to run and you didn’t have that because all the other drivers and such where taking up your 640K then you where not running the program. You could even create a RAM disk in that upper memory then store program files up there. Then when you ran the programs, they loaded super fast. Ah, those were the days, my friend.
Well, the IBM AT had a huge price tag. So, there were a lot of enterprising young men out there that were starting to sell clones — see Michael Dell. I wanted a new IBM AT but couldn’t afford the IBM name plate. So, I started looking around. Back then there was no Internet. I think computer shopper was starting to take off but, the key reference for a new machine or parts was a periodical named PC Magazine. They reviewed clones and parts and software. I was an early subscriber and held on to my vast collection of magazines for a number of years. But 25 years later I don’t have a single one. I found all the parts I wanted. The NEC Mulit-Sync was a big favorite of PC Magazine.
There was a guy that had a small clone business in Clear Lake that named his outfit “Seabrook Computers”. I can’t recall the guy’s name but, he managed to win a couple of purchase contracts for PC Clones for NASA. I think he was just reselling the machines to the government. That was a radical idea and back in the day when low bid got the nod. If I remember right, the name of the machines we Sequa PC or Seaqua PC. I believe it was an amalgamation of seabrook and quality. Old-Computers.com has a page dedicated to Seequa PCs. That’s probably it, and Seabrook Computers was just a reseller.
Seabrook had a pretty good deal for an AT clone. I spec’d it out and agreed to purchase it for $2,290 – close to $2,400 after tax! Now that was just for the box. You had to also buy the video card, the monitor (EGA – Enhanced Graphics Adapter), printer, mouse (really unnecessary at the time) and of course you had to have a modem. The modem was the new speed demon on the market at 2400 baud. I can’t recall if it was an internal modem or an external. Probably an internal modem.
A Modem was not required but allowed you to dial up to the ARPANET and “Bulletin Boards”. The bulletin boards were cool because they allowed for file sharing. They were early adopters of pirating software. But they had messaging systems (remember this was before eMail) and were fun to customize with ASCII graphics and colors. I ran a BBS for while but the wife got tired of the late night inbound phone calls and the modem squawking to make the connections so it was retired.
All those extra parts cost another $1,838. the total for this new computer was $4,223. That was a LOT of money in those days. In today’s dollars it be about $8,500. No one in their right mind would spend that on a computer today. Back then, this machine was state of the art. And, no one saw the onslaught of the increase in performance and decrease in prices that would prevail even to this day.
I didn’t have $4,223 but, I had a $1,000 and I used that as a down payment. CSC had an employee purchase program for computers. They offered to buy the computer for you and let you pay off the remaining through payroll deduction. I signed up and ended up paying back $100.71 per check for 32 checks. That took over a year.
I held on to that computer and even tried to run the non-graphical version of OS/2 on it. It was long in the tooth by that time and I think I just ended up junking it in the trash not much later.
Here are the two purchase orders from when I bought my parts and assemble my own AT Clone.
