I was at the scrap yard yesterday, picking up some aluminum blocks to play with on my new CNC milling machine, and decided to take a stroll out where they occasionally dump old mainframe parts. It's just this huge mud lot about 2 blocks square, with big mounds of twisted metal, wire, cable, crushed cars, and all kinds of other junk, with a bunch of bits of electronics thrown in more or less at random. I wasn't in the mood for a lot of climbing, so I just poked around the edges. I found a board about 18" square sitting on top of a barrel. When I picked it up, it was *way* too heavy for the size. Flipped it over and saw another, smaller board screwed to the bottom. It was marked "DataRAM". I thought "Oh no - surely not. It can't be core memory! But it's so *heavy*! What is it?" I took it along. I also found an old controller module of some kind with an RCA 1802 and support chips on it; now maybe I can finally build a real Elf. Anyway, they sell everything by the pound, and the two pieces cost me about $2. Brought it home, removed all the screws around the edge, pulled off the smaller board, and guess what? Acres of core! Tiny little ones, too - I haven't seen that much core, but the other small piece I have has cores with a center hole about the size of a pencil lead. These were so small they looked like grains of sand, or salt. Had to use a 12x magnifier to see them clearly. By my count, there are about 100 per inch in both directions, and it's about 8"x10", with a few gaps here and there, so this gives... ummm... (square root of 7, carry the 9...) uh... something under 800k-bits or so? Does this sound right? Anyway, I was pretty pumped. I may go back and do some serious climbing and burrowing this weekend... -Bill Richman bill_r(a)inetnebr.com http://incolor.inetnebr.com/bill_r (Home of the COSMAC Elf Simulator!)