Re: Crosspost: Did the cpu influence the display?

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

stephensheppard@hotmail.com wrote:
> Bill Vermillion wrote:
> > In article <c7%rf.10054$7S.5344@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com>,
> > Bill Plenge <B_Plenge@NoSpam.com> wrote:

<snip>

> > >Given that time period I think you'll find the major reason being
> > >the cost of RAM (circa '78 16K was about $80, by '82 64K-128K
> > >could be had for the same price) and color monitors at the time.
> >
> > You are low on the RAM price.  4116 RAM was going for $200
> > at the local electronics wholesalers.  I know - I priced it for my
> > machine.  That was mid-1978, as I had gotten my system at the end
> > of 1977.
> >
>
> Wow, $200 in 1978!  Something big must have happened in the next year
> or so.  I paid $18 for eight 4116's in 1979/80.
>
> They were used to upgrade my Atari 800 8K RAM module from 8K to 16K.
> Doesn't sound like much of an upgrade but I only had 24K total at the
> time and Atari 16K modules were $180+  retail.
>
> - Steve Sheppard

In January, 1981, California Digital (a component discounter) was
selling eight 200ns 4116's for $30, and that was a considerable
reduction from the "standard" price of about $75 and the Apple price
of $150 for the same set of eight DRAMs.  I bought 2 sets.

The price of DRAMs was pretty volatile then, as now.  A week after
I placed my order, the price of a set of eight went up to $40.

Of course, the general trend (averaged over a year or so) has always
been strongly downward--until the chip type became obsolete for new
designs.  A typical slope is that the price halved every year.

It would have been very difficult to find 4116s for $18 per set of
eight any earlier than mid-1981.

-michael

Apple II parallel computing!
http://members.aol.com/mjmahon