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Comment by lindner | Hacker News Reader

This is so true. You have to remember that finances were really tight at this time. The University budget was getting cut left and right throughout the history of Gopher's evolution. At one point there were plans to outsource everyone to the Minnesota Supercomputer Institute.

Of course in hindsight obtaining grants or forming a partnership with a non-profit org or an academic department might have been a better choice, especially for all the professional services requests.

edit: Also you have to remember that computing was a LOT more expensive then. I have old quotes for SparcStations and RS/6000s that were in the $20-40k range, even with an educational discount.. The Mac IIci's were not cheap either ~$5k when loaded up with RAM.

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> The University budget was getting cut left and right throughout the history of Gopher's evolution.

Was it actually getting cut or were they not getting the increase they wanted? I lived in MN off and on since the 90's and it seems like they call a "cut" every time they don't get the increase they want.

> edit: Also you have to remember that computing was a LOT more expensive then. I have old quotes for SparcStations and RS/6000s that were in the $20-40k range, even with an educational discount.. The Mac IIci's were not cheap either ~$5k when loaded up with RAM.

Looking back, when people see the price of the NeXT cube and freak out, they forget how much a Mac IIfx was. Its amazing the era had basically expensive computers and machines like the Sinclair and Commodores in the very low end.

Regarding cuts, yes. We had to do with less year-over-year. From Hasselmo's 1991 State of the U address:

> """We lost at least $25 million to inflation, and $16 million through a base cut this year. In addition to a potential $25 million loss to inflation next year again, the Governor's vetoes of IT and systemwide special appropriations cut another $23 million in funding -- for which we are aggressively seeking full restoration."""

The mainframe teams had a harder time of things. For Microcomputers we were lucky - our hardware costs decreased and we had a deal with the University Bookstore to support their computer hardware sales.

That stuff was still expensive. Here's some educational pricing for a workstation with substantial education discount in 1994.

                                        list          discount   
  IBM model 25T                         $8495         $5400.00
         80Mhz upgrade                  $1500         $ 953.50
         64MB upgrade                   $             $2912.00
         2GB disk upgrade               $             $1463.00
                                                       -------
                                                      10728.50

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