Most liked posts in thread: Dodged a digital bullet.

  1. Dr Obnxs

    Dr Obnxs New Member

    Jun 11, 2009
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    It's all relative...

    on my first Amiga 500, I saved and saved to get 1.5 meg of ram in DIP chips to populate the board out to 2 meg! $200. 20 meg HDD, another $200. Nice system though.

    As far as memory suppliers, I worked in the semi industry. Memory chips are commodities with everyone buying based on spec pretty much independent of manufacturer. They go bad. Crap, gamma rays can flip bits! (but they can get flipped back again). Heck, it's damned near impossible to make perfect ram chips, so they're done with extra cells. Before they are packaged, they are tested and the bad cells are fused out with good cells by some fancy laser machines. It's pretty cool!

    I just whipped out my Ronald Reagan "Trust but Verify" magnafying glass... The chips are from Micron, they do good stuff. Crap happens. The memory is so integrated today the only other stuff on the board seems to be some terminating resistors and one or two transistors (I'm guessing for power regulation).

    I just hope I get a replacement for free. If not, not that big a deal.

    Matt
     
  2. ScottinBend

    ScottinBend Space Cowboy
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    May 4, 2009
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    He's from the animated movie Yellow Submarine
     
  3. Rixter

    Rixter Well-Known Member

    Jun 14, 2009
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    Matt how many floppy drives did you get with yours? :lol:

    We had a protype Compaq 386, the first in Canada back in the days. $18K for a 386 with 20 or 30 MB HDD, can't quite remember :crazy:
     
  4. goaljnky

    goaljnky New Member

    Apr 7, 2009
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    LaLaLand, Left Coast, Overpopulated and Underfunde
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    Yeah, the chips themselves are made by a handful of companies. What separates good RAM from mediocre RAM from bad RAM are the quality controls implemented by the manufacturers like Crucial, Kingston, Patriot, etc. Tighter controls result in higher percentage of chips not passing out of a any given gross buy, resulting in higher cost per "good" chip.

    Then you get the chips that do better than others and perform above and beyond. Those end up being sold at premium prices to the more demanding consumers. (servers, gamers, etc.)
     
  5. Johngo

    Johngo New Member
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    Ah yes... The days when a new game meant a new computer, or at least updating pretty much everything IN the computer.

    I love my XBox 360 Slim... :D
     
  6. Metalman

    Metalman Well-Known Member
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    Sep 29, 2009
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    Ex-Owner (Retired) of a custom metal fab company.
    Columbus, Ohio
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    One of my computers is a MacBook Pro. Why would 8.0 GB of memory (2x4GB SO-Dimms cost $600.00?

    I know, I know, because Apple can.:crazy:
     
  7. goaljnky

    goaljnky New Member

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  8. Metalman

    Metalman Well-Known Member
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    Thanks......:Thumbsup:
     
  9. Minidave

    Minidave Well-Known Member
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    Dec 22, 2009
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    By the way, his name is Jeremy Hilary Boob, PHD.
     
  10. rkw

    rkw Well-Known Member

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    Don't BIOS still have an option to run a memory check during boot? You could turn it on if you have a problem. It used to be default a long time ago and you would see the count of memory addresses while booting. That was fine in the days of 1 MB RAM but understandable that it became no longer default as standard memory sizes increased.
     
  11. goaljnky

    goaljnky New Member

    Apr 7, 2009
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    That only showed you memory present. It did not check if it was working properly.
     
  12. werD

    werD Club Coordinator

    May 19, 2009
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    Slave to technology...
    Nashville, TN
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    Must be that time of year, my Mac puked up it's video card (one of the illustrious POS nVidia sets that is prone to "de-soldering" itself over time). Works great - just can't see a thing via the LCD or display port...

    Fortunately the AppleCare warranty is still in place and a free fix is coming ASAP.
     
  13. Nathan

    Nathan Founder

    Mar 30, 2009
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    Still fighting this, now running on a stripped PC. 1 memory stick, 1 Hard Drive, 1 monitor (egads). Soon I start putting parts back in one at time till it blows up again.

    Agree on the time of year thing, an associate that I work with quite often had his mac bite the dust today too.
     
  14. ScottinBend

    ScottinBend Space Cowboy
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    A man who knows stuff.............!

    :Thumbsup: