🚀 go-pugleaf

>>>>> On 30 Sep 90 18:48:36 GMT, staff@cadlab.sublink.ORG (Alex Martelli) said:

Alex> Don't DREAM of doing serious sw development with just 16 meg of RAM,
Alex> your links will CRAWL.  If you can afford to stuff the beast with
Alex> expensive ECC memory, I believe it would be a great environment

The ECC *memory* itself is not expensive.  The rather extensive
circuitry that IBM puts on its memory boards to do ECC (SECDED),
bit-swapping, and chip-swapping is most of the cost.

There are 3rd parties currently developing SIMM's to fit into the
slots on the memory boards that IBM sells.  These will be *much*
cheaper than IBM's offering -- maybe $150/MB vs $600/MB (list) or
$420/MB (educational discount) from IBM.  I will post more info when I
get my board populated and my supplier tells me that he is ready to
mass produce.

There is also a significant possibility that IBM will lower its prices
when they announce the support of 4 Mbit technology in its memory
boards.  As I understand it, the boards already support 256kbit, 1
Mbit and 4 Mbit chips, but IBM is not yet ready to release the 4MByte
SIMM's for those boards --- maybe reliability trouble, but more likely
just a question of availability....
--
John D. McCalpin			mccalpin@perelandra.cms.udel.edu
Assistant Professor			mccalpin@vax1.udel.edu
College of Marine Studies, U. Del.	J.MCCALPIN/OMNET