I am the proud
owner of two Thinker Toys products, the Wunderbus, and
the EconoRAM IV (hope that's the right model, this was one of those
really EARLY dynamic RAM boards; the ceramic gold-topped versions of
these chips worked fine, the but the plastic ones had trouble forgetting
things when they got hit by cosmic rays).
It was the gold eutectic weld that was the source of alpha particles
that were the concern at the time. The later problem was Dram timing
problems and there were fixes.
Ah, I stand corrected... and that would explain why the system was
always flaky with that board in, and stable without it (I was blaming
the bus).
So, knowing nothing about the half-life of the welding material,
can you tell me, has the material in the welds decayed enough now
that the board should operate in a more stable fashion?
-dq