I'm sure that the reason that his computer ran faster was because of the
added RAM (7Mb vs 4 Mb) and not because of the gold on the ICs.
Joe
At 05:14 PM 1/27/04 -0800, Tom wrote:
>I'm sorry, but just because a lot of people believe a thing doesn't mean
>it's true. (Unless you mean you can get the other believer(s) to pay
>more :-)
>
>The 1101's with gold tops are another thing entirely, (possibly)
>extremely old, hence 'interesting'. Gold doesn't oxidize quickly, and is
>a better conductor, and will likely improve reliability of connectors
>under adverse conditions (like humidity, insufficient pressure, etc) but
>it makes nothing 'go faster'. Tin/lead or other platings work fine as
>long as you keep the physical environment in the computer OK.
>
>
>On Tue, 2004-01-27 at 15:21, Brian Mahoney wrote:
>> 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 - 19:42:18 GMT