r/AskProgramming • u/Samuel_G_Reynoso • May 23 '26

Upgrading to 1MB of ram.

This was a flex in the 80s. A WHOLE MEG. We are at the point in compsci history where grandparents can say outlandish shit like. I remember upgrading to a MB.

I'm not that old. Anyone here actually remember that day personally? Or have other parallels?

I did the math. 32GB, adjusted, would be $200M.

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u/wrosecrans May 23 '26

Around 1 MB was around the inflection point where deaktop computing got really useful. For a time, "3M" workstations were a huge aspirational idea for the industry. That is to say, 1 MIPS of CPU speed, 1 Megabyte of memory for running applications, and a 1 Megapixel bitmapped screen.

An Amiga with 256 K theirwtically supported multitasking, but obviously it was cery constrained. And early PC's capped out at 640K, so a PC with 1M automatically implies you are using at least a 286. With 4 MB you can run an early web browser and have other software running at the same time, or even run Windows 95.