9 Aug
2008
9 Aug
'08
2:32 a.m.
When I worked at Odetics Anaheim,CA in the mid-70s we used tons of the
"flatpacks" in our Spacebourne black boxes. They came in TTL, CMOS and I
think even some ECL. The parts were spot welded with the legs straight out
to gold posts that protruded slightly off of the PCBs. Expensive stuff, a
RAM chip cost about $600 at the time. The parts were real low profile and
weighed less than DIPs ( important in spacecraft, weight / space is at a
premium ). The parts were all MIL-STD and some projects even RAD-hardened
parts. Fun stuff.
Best regards, Steven
My first TTL databook was from TI, and I believe there was some small number
precursor
On Friday 08 August 2008 21:44, Eric Smith wrote:
> Roy J. Tellason wrote:
> > The other thing that I took some notice of was mention of an 18-pin
chip
> > package as "recently developed" at
one point in the story, and later
on
the mention of the 40-pin package as being then
available.
The 18 pin-per-package limit claims regarding the 4004 and 8008 have
been around for a long time, and I think they came from interviews with
Intel's founders and/or early employees, but I think they're factually
incorrect, at least as commonly stated.
The 24-pin DIP was very well established by 1968, and was already used
by TI at that time. of 24-pin devices in there, like the 74154 and
similar. (Hope I'm
remembering right here. :-)
> There were certainly higher pin-count packages at that time also. I'm
not
> sure about the 40-pin DIP, but in 1969 Fairchild
was shipping at least
one
memory chip in
a 36-pin DIP, though that particular package never became
popular.
There were also those "flatpacks" which I never could figure out. A
to surface mount? Something else?
I
Possibly whatever specific company Intel was
contracting with to supply
lead frames and ceramic packages didn't yet offer higher pin count
packages, but they obviously were available from some vendors since
other semiconductor companies like Fairchild and TI were using them.
I guess a large part of it was the machinery to handle that stuff too,
besides the lead frames themselves. I don't know much about that stuff so don't know if any given production machinery would
be adaptable to many
different sizes or if you'd need a different bigger machine to handle
them.
If the latter was the case then I can see where they
might be reluctant if
there weren't a lot of demand.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by
lies. --James
M Dakin