[vcf-midatlantic] Memories of 1977

[Richard Cini]

Hm, great question. I had to do a bit of searching, but there is an article in the NY Times from January 1977 referencing the newly-introduced MOSTEK 16kx1 RAM with the same pinout as the 4k version. 1kx1, 1kx4, and 4kx1 organizations were around. Looking at CompuPro boards, the EconoRam VII manual I have is dated 3/79 and was 24kx8 using 4k chips. The higher-density RAM16 (using 2kx8 24-pin SRAMs) was dated 1982, so too late, but that gives you some fenceposts. The EconoRam II (8K) used 2102L chips and the manual was dated 1977. The EconoRam IV says 1978 and that used 4kx1 chips (MM5257).

Rich
 
--
Rich Cini
http://cini.classiccmp.org
http://altair32.classiccmp.org <http://www.classiccmp.org/altair32>
 

On 1/12/22, 1:47 PM, "vcf-midatlantic on behalf of Joseph Giliberti via vcf-midatlantic" <vcf-midatlantic-bounces at lists.vcfed.org on behalf of vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

    Greetings!
    I'm still in planning stages for my homebrew computer and one of my goals
    is to keep it period appropriate. Part of that is not using any parts or
    technologies introduced later than 1977.
    
    I want my computer to have at least 32k of SRAM. So, by the end of 1977,
    what was the densest chip commonly available which I won't have to go
    bonkers trying to locate?
    
    Thanks
    Joe Giliberti