mainframes and other stuff

[ben]

On 11/21/2014 8:29 PM, William Donzelli wrote:
> Oops, not 67 but 75.
>
> --
> Will
>
> On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 10:28 PM, William Donzelli <wdonzelli at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Actually, IBM gear had VERY little gold in them.
>>
>> Have you seen the inside of a 4381? There is a large array of
>> multichip modules, sort of forerunners of the air cooled TCM - each
>> one has almost 1000 gold plated pins.
>>
>>> So, a good-sized 360 mainframe had a couple Oz. of gold, total.
>>
>> The NASA model 67 reportedly had 66 ounces of gold in the CPU. Even an
>> early model 30 could have 8 or 9.
>>
>> It is true that midway through the S/360 period and into the S/370
>> period, the gold was really trimmed away to save costs - thus my wide
>> range of values for 3803 tape controllers (they usually have a random
>> mix of gold and tin backplanes).
>>
>> --
>> Will
>
>

But don't forget gold was still cheap, compared to today.
Ben.