22 Jun
2000
22 Jun
'00
8:39 a.m.
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. 
22 Jun
22 Jun
10:09 a.m.
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
It was the timing problem... the failure rate (soft) for the alpha
particle thing was so low you'd see power hits and other gremlins
first.
S100 system were prone to bus noise (even with wonderbus) so where a
card was installed could litterally mean fail/flakey/works for the same
card! Bus termination schemes were used to help but the 22 slot bus was
too long and a more modest 18 or 12 slot was always more reliable.
Dram cards were by and large trouble as they were most sensitive to timing
problems. I always ran static for testing and some systems for that
reason.
Allison
8802
days inactive
8802
days old
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allisonp＠world.std.com -
dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com