mainframes and other stuff

[William Donzelli]

> Let's say that a Pentium Pro has a third of a gram; a troy ounce is
> 31.1 grams; so 94 Pentium Pro to the troy ounce; 4.5 pounds is about
> 65 troy ounces; so 6,182 Pentium Pro might have that much gold.

There are 12 troy ounces to the pound, not 16.

Anyway, yes, you are talking about something like 4800 PPros
equivalent. Now compare the plated surface areas of a PPro compared to
a number of the pins on the backplane - you will find that a gold
plate area on a PPro (mind you, there is a fair amount under the
cover, too) equates to a surprisingly small amount of old IBM
backplane pins. Remember, the pins are long, and plated on four sides
- and probably had a thicker plate that on PPros.

And yes, the 75 was a really huge machine. Gold on the backplanes,
gold on the connectors (early Bus&Tags have a very heavy plate), gold
in transistors. I would not be surprised if there was gold in the lamp
sockets.

--
Will