On Sat, 20 Aug 2005, Spehro Pefhany wrote:

> Yup. I paid something like $900 US for a CPM 8048 assembler and simulator
> on an 8" floppy back in the dark ages. I'm pretty sure the author wrote it
> in 8080 assembly. Nine hundred dollars was worth a lot more back in 1980.

But I think that the *ratio* between tooling cost and expected revenue 
matters more. A $1000 compiler cannot be justified by someone who makes 
1000 units of something that costs $20 each and can budget $2 per unit 
for the tool cost alone. In 'those times' nothing electronic cost $20 
and the tool depreciation and amortisation would occur respectively 
slower, and faster than today. Even if the margin would have been the 
same, procentually, in 'those times' developers would have been ten 
times better off than now. Now a $1000 compiler would last for about a 
year before becoming obsolete. For how long could you use that 8048 
compiler ? 7 years ? 10 ?

Peter
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