PC hardware history

GodAtum · 1 Apr 2018 at 15:14

I was digging ou my old 80s PC case and it got me thinking. Would today's obsession with RGB and tempered glass cases be technically possible back in the 80s? Not sure when LEDs where invented.

MagicBoy · 1 Apr 2018 at 16:09

Does the power and hard drive indicators use good old fashioned light bulbs?

mrbazmondo · 1 Apr 2018 at 17:03

No, blue LEDs took ages to come about at affordable prices. That's why they're overused on products these days. Red and yellow ones would have been about.

MagicBoy · 1 Apr 2018 at 17:24

... and green

mrbazmondo · 1 Apr 2018 at 17:29

Yeah - green as well. My Amiga used to have red yellow and green.

https://www.popsci.com/article/technology/why-blue-led-worth-nobel-prize

mrbazmondo · 1 Apr 2018 at 17:32

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#Blue_LED

Pocah · 2 Apr 2018 at 11:52

Back then PC's were very expensive. About the same price they are now, so in real terms they have dropped in price considerably. Few people could afford them back then. In today's prices an IBM PC was about £5000. People wanted economy not flashy. When the Chinese first introduced clones they came in a whacking 2/3 of the cost of the original IBM and they concentrated on cheap cases, cheap motherboards, cheap everything.
The first PC's were 4Mhz. To think now we are above 4GHz! The idea of flashy was far from anyone's mind. Apart from anything else there wasn't really much you could do with them! It took a long time before modern gaming really even started. The likes of Wolfenstein 3D came out in 1992, then Doom in 1993. I wonder if anyone remembers the Voodoo? Or the GeForce 256? Amazing to think really that FPS games are only 26 years old.

Habakkuk · 2 Apr 2018 at 18:51

The RGB effect is nice as fad, but I wish the lights were functional - I want to see how underload the computer is from it's colour.

Maybe not panels of blinking lights, but making the inside of the window glow.

Next project....