Ian King wrote:
I once bought RAM for a PC from a store that insisted
on walking me
to the register, then checking my purchase against the receipt
before I could leave.
DRAM in the 80's was a scarce commodity in the US, when the
government imposed anti-dumping penalties on the big Asian makers.
It was pretty ugly; there were even some break-ins in Silicon Valley
for the sole purpose of stealing DRAM.
Even into the mid 90's, you could open to the back pages of any PC
magazine and see ads proclaiming "Top dollar paid for your RAM".
Now, we toss it into the landfill.
--Chuck