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A 1977 Time Capsule, Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder
(techfixated.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
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A kilobyte must have sounded like so much memory back then.
A byte is 8 bits. Even if we want to call bits quarters ($0.25) and bytes dollars, 69KB would be $69,000! That's a lot of dollars.
(And it's actually 1,024 or something instead of 1,000, which just increases it that much more).
It's crazy how KBs used to be incredibly meaningful, and now we're buying multi-TB drives like they're nothing!
EDIT: Math fail. Let's say TWO bits are a quarter...lmao
😭
Well...up until recently
I remember my first 2GB flash drive. I thought I had sooo much storage...
Years later when I learned I could get an SD card with 32GB, I was like "It comes in 32GB? 🤯"
And don't even get me started on my first 1TB hard drive!
Last year, I bought a 22TB hard drive to recover from a 17TB drive failure. I barely got my wife to agree to the one drive, and simply could not convince her that we should get a backup. Our compromise was that I'd add a category to our budget with a year-long goal for a new hard drive. On Friday, I bought my new hard drive after wiping out the category, cashing some old bonds, and borrowing some money from a friend who also uses my server. I wanna fucking cry...
I was alive when computer RAM was measured in MB, not GB
I was alive when computer RAM was measured in KB and when you wanted to have more of it, you had to manually solder it to the main board... Youngling.
I remember having to fuck around with master/slave configurations with drives. So many headaches were had trying to get them in the right order. Those were the days heh.
Wouldn't a byte be $2 if a bit was a quarter, or do you mean 2 bits are a quarter? Also i think you were right to use powers of 10 in your estimate. Article says kilobyte, not kibibyte. I really like what your conversion illustrates, I'm just tripping up on the details. I could be wrong-- commenting so someone can correct me if i am-- if a bit is a quarter, 69 Kilobytes would be $138,000
LOL...yes. should've been an Eighth, but we don't have a coin for that.
Your math is right. I was just thinking of a Byte as $1.00 and going from there. Then remembered that bits are smaller, but they shouldn't be $1 because a single bit is not very powerful. But making it worth $1 or $0.01 would make the math messier.
But yes. Two bits are a quarter is probably the best compromise! Lol
If a bit is 3.5 grams, then a byte is an ounce...
That makes a kilobyte about 1000 ounces!
So then a TB must be about...a metric shitton?
It's a trillion ounces, I don't know how much that is in metric...
How many Oz in a Wizard again?
You have that backwards, it's one wizard in an oz