This post brought back some memories. Back in the early 90s, I put together a maxed-out IIfx for use at my job at a prepress service bureau. The bare IIfx alone was $11,000, and the complement of 16x 16MB SIMMs, for a then-staggering 256MB of total memory, added another hefty amount. Add in a couple top of the line graphics cards and dual 21" CRTs (the largest generally available at the time) and the whole thing came to some $30,000.

Adjusted for inflation, that's around $50,000. Something to keep in mind for anyone who might complain about the cost of the latest Mac Pro.