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Hardware in 1998

ratman743ratman743
edited September 2016 in Hardware
I'm asking this to get more than one experience from that era, but right now I'm going off of a vintage Dell Latitude CPi-A I bought at an auction. The problem is: It's from 1999.

It has 256MB of RAM, and a 6.49 GB HDD, with an Intel Pentium II @ 366 MhZ.

Now, I seriously doubt that these specs are representative of the PCs of that era, but I was a little surprised when I talked to a friend that said they had an old Compaq Pressario with 256 Megs of RAM as well, and this was in '98, not '99.

VPC 2004 says the recommended memory is 64MB, but I've been increasing it to 256MB lately to fit the trend I've been finding.

HDD space is my main concern, but knowledge of the RAM amounts from that time would be useful too.

Thanks in advance for anyone that helps!

Comments

  • calvinbcalvinb
    64 MB was very common in 1999, (from PCs I own that I knew were stock: for 1998, 32 MB was common on the low, 1999 had 64 MB on high, 2000 had 128 MB on high) but 256 MB became a popular aftermarket upgrade in the years later, especially as we didn't hit the plateau yet.
  • dos3.21dos3.21
    ratman743 wrote:
    It has 256MB of RAM, and a 6.49 GB HDD, with an Intel Pentium II @ 366 MhZ.

    Now, I seriously doubt that these specs are representative of the PCs of that era, but I was a little surprised when I talked to a friend that said they had an old Compaq Pressario with 256 Megs of RAM as well, and this was in '98, not '99.

    My own PCs of that era were a custom-made PC in 1996 with 32MB RAM (later upgraded to 64MB) and one in 2000 with 128MB RAM (later upgraded to 768MB).

    Look at those examples for consumer grade hardware in Germany of that era:

    1997, 16MB: http://www.katzentier.de/_misc/Vobis/
    2000, 128MB: http://www.pcent.de/aldifan/pc0300.htm

    Upgrading components during the useful life of a PC was common at the time, I don't think they were bought new with that much RAM.
  • SomeGuySomeGuy
    256MB sounds about right if it is maxed out. Most people would have bought with less, but the unit was probably upgraded.
  • BlueSunBlueSun
    Not sure exactly when but we had a laptop from around 1999 / 1998, I believe it came with 64 MB and we upgraded to 96 MB later around 2000 or so.

    Most of the computers I saw from that time were around 64 MB with 128 MB being higher end. I'd have drooled if I saw a machine with 256 MB of RAM.
  • ratman743ratman743
    Okay, so we've got the RAM cleared out ^^

    The HDD specs are the most confounding thing to me, though. I know Gigabytes were definitely not unheard of, but what would be the low end, mid end, and high end HDD classifications?

    Were a lot of HDDs 4GBs? 6?

    Thanks, again, for any help.

    I found this to be slightly helpful, but alas, no price specifications or anything:
    http://www.redhill.net.au/d/d-98.html

    I am, however sure that the 19.3 GB disk had an ungodly price tag attached to it.
  • KCompRoom2000KCompRoom2000
    I know for Macs from that period, They usually ranged from a Beige PowerMac G3 to a Bondi Blue iMac, And for laptops there was the Powerbook G3 "Wallstreet". Their specs had G3 CPUs ranging from 233 to 333 MHz, Usually with Hard Drives ranging from 2 to 8GB, DVD Drives were an option for High-end models so CD drives were more common.

    As for PCs, Their CPUs were either Pentium MMX ranging from 200 to 266 MHz or a Pentium II from 233 through 400 MHz, There were also other CPU brand options such as the AMD K6 or the Cyrix MII. Windows 98 was the norm for consumers and for businesses there was Windows NT 4.0.

    I have a Powerbook G3 from 1998 in its original condition (Aside from the RAM upgraded from 32MB to 288MB and it running Mac OS 9) with a 250 MHz G3, 4GB Hard Drive and a 13-inch Display, I also had a Dell Latitude CP M166ST from Late 1997 with a Pentium MMX 166 MHz, 32MB RAM, 2GB HDD and Windows 95. So I had some experiences with 1998 Laptops. Although I was born 2 years later than that so I can't really say for certain. This is just going from online research.
  • menagemenage
    Depends on the month.
    Budget Pentiums were typically bundled with 1 GB or 2 GB drives. Pentium II systems from Dell started off with 4GB drives but could upgraded to the new 8-10 GB drives at the beginning of the year while 18 GB drives were introduced towards the end of the year. All these drives were IDE. Cheap systems from Compaq, especially the Celeron models, were generally paired with the very slow Bigfoot drives.

    For SCSI, 4 GB drives were common with the workstation and cheap servers while 8GB, 18GB, and 36 GB drives were all available.
  • altracker9altracker9
    I purchased my new Compaq Presario 1694 laptop in Dec 1999 at Best Buy for $2099.
    It had a 450 MHz AMD K6-2 processor with 64mb memory, a 6.0 GB HDD, DVD drive and Win98se.
    In Apr 2000, I upgraded the memory to its maximum of 192mb for $299.
    Worst PC I've ever owned. Takes almost 5 minutes to boot.

    PCs seemed to make great strides in the next few years (2000 - 02).
    Just two years later, I bought a new Pentium 4, 1.7 GHz desktop PC for $1895 that included:
    512 mb memory (upgraded later to 1.5 GB)
    80GB HDD (upgradable to 120 GB Max), DVD and CD-RW drives
    Windows XP
    Lexmark Printer
    Still using this PC, althought the Lexmark printer bit the dust long ago.
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