512 byes of RAM costing $2,000:
One of the biggest limiting factors of early computers was the cost of RAM. In the late 1970s, I remember seeing an advertisement for 64K of RAM costing $1,000. Today, you can get 64 gigs of DDR4 for under $100.
This is why the Atari 2600 video game system released in 1977 only had 128 bytes of RAM.
The first TRS-80 came with 4K. The VIC-20 had 5K.
The Sinclair ZX-81 came with 1K. Its American counterpart came with 2K. Both were expandable to 16K.
The Nintendo Entertainment System, first released in Japan in 1983, had 4.25K RAM.
By late 1983, RAM had gotten cheaper, so we saw the Commodore 64 released with 64K, and the Timex Sinclair 2068 with 48K RAM.
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