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andrewstuarttoday at 12:44 PM2 repliesview on HN

64K was huge when the Commodore 64 came along.


Replies

Twirrimtoday at 4:07 PM

I barely used or remember the ZX-81 my folks had with it's amazing 1KB of memory. It had a 16K expansion module you could plug into the back, which apparently made a big difference, but also didn't have the greatest connection. You could easily dislodge it typing on the keyboard. I do remember my father coming up with various ways to try to secure it.

The ZX Spectrum that followed, with its huge 48K of RAM was night and day. The programs were so much more complicated.

Even echo on linux these days takes 38K of disk space and a baseline of 13K of memory to execute, before whatever is required to hold the message you're repeating.

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Liotoday at 2:14 PM

Not sure why the down votes, this is true. If you only had 16, 32, or 48K then 64K seemed like a lot.

Hell, the RAM size was so important that they named machines after it.