CompuServe Thread

#3000 RAM

5 messages in this thread
#162914From: Dave ArreSep 8, 1994 1:18 AM
Steven: Dale mentioned that ZIP chips may not be made anymore, and I dbout if the chips were ever that cheap to begin with…. Am I sure I don't want to buy a PowerMac? — Dave
#163024From: Steven D. KapplinSep 8, 1994 3:32 PM
Dave, Well, Memory World still advertises them in Amiga World. You can listen to Dale or call MM and find out. As for how cheap they were, I paid $15.95 a chip about 2 years back. When I bought my tower about a year ago I paid $23.95 a chip. MM advertises at about $24.95, I believe. SIMMs for a powermac are $179 for 4 meg, which is $44.75 per meg. At $24 or $25 per SC zip your talking $48 to $50 per meg, so PowerMacs aren't much cheaper!! If you get the 8100 and need the 60ns SIMMs you will pay $199 for a 4 meg SIMM. Don't complain, RAM isn't that cheap today.
#163040From: Dale LarsonSep 8, 1994 5:37 PM
Dale said he last found them for about $24 per chip. Which makes 4 megs cost about $50/meg. You paid too much for your powermac SIMMs unless they are 60ns or better. It's about $130-150 for 4 MB simms last I checked. Dale L. Larson Intangible Assets Manufacturing (info@iam.com) "That's the best part about being crazy. You see things no one else can see."
#163071From: Steven D. KapplinSep 8, 1994 10:32 PM
Dale, Well, I'd check again. I've looked several places in the past week and haven't found them that cheap, leastwise not from any reliable mailorder house in single lots retail. But even if they were available readily at that price, that's about $40 a meg for a widely used product which nearly everyone stocks because it can be used on such a wide variety of platforms and is manufactured in much larger quantity. SC Zips aren't used anywhere that I've seen outside of the Amiga platform and we're still only talking about a 20% difference. If the Amiga used a more widely produced chip, like a DIP ram or ordinary SIMMs, the cost wouldn't be any higher just because the ram was for an Amiga. The question related to the Amiga cost being higher because dealers were milking higher prices for Amiga memory. But when you get right down to it, it's not the Amiga that causes the memory price to be so high, it's that the Amiga uses a relatively expensive chip which isn't widely used or produced. Amiga dealers might gouge on some things, but I really don't think memory is it. If Amiga hardware were produced in large enough quantity, even a lot of it would be less expensive. Not meaning to tread heavily into your bailiwick, but look at Amiga network products. Talk about high prices. Even video boards are a bit costly compared to PC video cards. Anyway, this isn't really a matter which needs to be beaten so badly. Memory is a lot of money even at $40 a meg when a few years ago it was below $30. But then, I remember when gas was less than a quarter a gallon.
#163084From: Dave ArreSep 9, 1994 12:32 AM
Steven: That makes me feel more at ease. I had this image of PC and Mac people snapping up their much-needed RAM by the gigabyte at $100/GB. :^) Due to other concerns right now (like, for instance, the furnace — it would be nice to have the house above freezing in the wintertime) I will wait to put in the RAM and Buster, so I'll just do the 3.1 upgrade now. I'll update the RAM when I can get the Emplant, or a few months down the road. Thanks for your help! — Dave