31 Jul
2013
31 Jul
'13
7:20 p.m.
> and RAM [IFF you
> did not buy it from IBM] was a TRIVIAL expense to bring it up to 64K.
On Thu,
1 Aug 2013, Liam Proven wrote:
Blimey. The difference between a 1`6K and 48K Spectrum
wasn't trivial
to me around then, but I guess when you paid 10x as much for your
computer, yes, it would be trivial.
Certainly horrible if you bought from IBM!
I don't remember the numbers, but it was probably between $100 and $300
per row of 16K!
However, the TRS80 and Apple aftermarket both used the same 16K chips.
At that time, I was buying and reselling floppy drives and tubes of RAM.
IIRC, I SOLD 16K rows for about $50.
As you pointed out, that would be a lot for a cheap computer, but
negligible for a $2K machine.
IIRC, IBM wanted about $500 for a Tandon TM100-1 (single sided drive), and
I was selling them (for TRS80) at $200.
Easier, as ONE
vendor did, to sell the 64K for one price, and the version
for use in 16K for a bit more money, since the 16K version included 27
chips that you had to plug into open sockets on the motherboard. THAT
ploy was handy for dealing with Board Of Education types who sometimes had
a software budget, but no hardware budget.
Ahahaha! Cunning!