I remember when I bought my first 'real' computer, an IBM 486SX-33, it had
gold ram in it and I subsequently bought four megs of the same ram for
something like $100.00. Somehow I had the computer working with 7 megs of
ram and it seemed much faster than the four I originally got it with.
Anyway, there was a discussion about why only gold ram (of course I mean ram
that uses gold to coat the pins that fit in the slots) should be used in
certain types of computers as opposed to the normal ram, which was lead or
something like that. I did a search then and this was long before Google and
came up with the concept that gold coated ram would 'heal' itself after the
small teeth on the connectors grabbed it while the more normal ram let
oxidants in which would, in time, ruin the chip. Now I am wondering if the
gold ram connectors had teeth and the regular ram connectors didn't.
To make a short story long, I sold the chips for exactly the same price I
paid for them a year or so later to a place that bought ram for resale. I
assume the guy wanted them for printers or something. He was astonished to
see the gold connectors and after paying me the 100 bucks asked me if I had
any more! At that time ram was far less than what I had paid for the two
chips and I guess the premium was for the gold.
I bet everyone will be scrambling around looking for gold ram over the next
few days.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe R." <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
To: <cctalk_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2004 7:14 PM
Subject: Did you guys see this? 24 C1101A gold RAM chips = $418
>
<
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2781001588&category=1247
> &sspagename=STRK%3AMEBWA%3AIT&rd=1>
>
> To hell collecting computers! We should rip them apart for the chips!
>
> </flamebait>
>
> Joe
>
Received on Tue Jan 27 2004 - 17:21:31 GMT