Speaking of RAM memory
Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2010 8:44 am
Someone here mentioned troubles with getting memory for a MAC and I thought I'd tell my story.
I remember back when I bought an expansion memory card and 2 meg of memory chips to expand my XT. (I didn't find out until I'd had it for about two years that it had, not an 8086, but a V20 processor. That's made by NEC, not Intel, and is basically two processors in one because it will also run 8080 code as well as 8086 code.)
This was around 1990 and either cost $400 or $800 - I forget which - the going rate then for 2 meg of memory. It was something like 24 chips in a plastic tube like quarters in a roll, that you removed and seated one-at-a-time in the expansion card.
I just went into Micro Center this weekend and bought a 512 megabyte PC-2700 memory rod to expand the memory on my several-year-old Hewlett Packard Pavillion A305W to the maximum 1 GB that it can handle. I think the A305W either came with 512 meg or it came with 256 and I boosted it to 512 when I bought the computer then moved the extra 256 to a different computer.
I opened my box up and I was correct, I have one slot with 512 MB and 1 empty memory slot. After figuring the position it fit perfectly, started it up and my machine now has like 0.995 GB available. I'm using it to write this post.
This is more than 200 times as much memory as I bought some 20 years ago for, let's say $400, and it's also from the same Micro Center in Vienna, Virginia. Retail off-the-shelf price: $27.95.
I remember back when I bought an expansion memory card and 2 meg of memory chips to expand my XT. (I didn't find out until I'd had it for about two years that it had, not an 8086, but a V20 processor. That's made by NEC, not Intel, and is basically two processors in one because it will also run 8080 code as well as 8086 code.)
This was around 1990 and either cost $400 or $800 - I forget which - the going rate then for 2 meg of memory. It was something like 24 chips in a plastic tube like quarters in a roll, that you removed and seated one-at-a-time in the expansion card.
I just went into Micro Center this weekend and bought a 512 megabyte PC-2700 memory rod to expand the memory on my several-year-old Hewlett Packard Pavillion A305W to the maximum 1 GB that it can handle. I think the A305W either came with 512 meg or it came with 256 and I boosted it to 512 when I bought the computer then moved the extra 256 to a different computer.
I opened my box up and I was correct, I have one slot with 512 MB and 1 empty memory slot. After figuring the position it fit perfectly, started it up and my machine now has like 0.995 GB available. I'm using it to write this post.
This is more than 200 times as much memory as I bought some 20 years ago for, let's say $400, and it's also from the same Micro Center in Vienna, Virginia. Retail off-the-shelf price: $27.95.