Semiconductor memory was introduced to the market as somewhat cheaper and more reliable than ferrite-core memory (although the greater reliability did not really obtain originally), and Fairchild of course manufactured the semiconductors that it used in its own semiconductor memory and sold to IBM, certainly at a profit, for IBM's semiconductor memory.
Here Tom Marchant's numbers yield 250_000/262_144 = US$0.9537/byte in contrast to Ed Gould's 10_000/1_048_576 = US$0.009537. That is an improbable difference of two decimal orders of magnitude! On 3/15/13, Tom Marchant <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 19:28:07 -0500, Ed Gould wrote: > >>Phil: >> >>My memory is a bit foggy here but IIRC a megabyte in 370 memory was >>$10,000 . > > That may have been true at some time in its life. In the early 1970s when I > was working at Wayne State, we had a model 65 that was later converted to > (or replaced by, I don't remember) a model 67. At some time during its > life, we bought a few megabytes of Fairchild semiconductor memory that came > 256K bytes per box with a price of about $250,000 per box. My understanding > was that it was less expensive than the core memory that came before it. > > Funny thing was that when it was delivered, there was only one guy in the > truck who had to move it by himself. No loading dock, so he had to wheel it > onto the lift tailgate, then lower it to the ground. One of the boxws got > away from him and went right off the tailgate and fell to the ground. It > was a total loss. > > -- > Tom Marchant > >> >>On Mar 14, 2013, at 3:49 PM, Phil Smith III wrote: >> >>> S/360 memory was a buck a byte (at some point in its life). > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > -- John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA t. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
