Date   : Wed, 18 Oct 2006 14:30:36
From   : Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...>
Subject: Re: [OT] Would anyone happen to have a 4116 dram chip

chris whytehead wrote:
> <nostalgia> Back in 1983/4 when I worked in a BT computer centre in Cardiff,
> by day and programmed my BBC by night. In the days when there was a company
> called ICL that made mainframe computers. When a computer centre had
> engineers on sire round the clock, they were reliable ICL mainframes after
> all </nostalgia>.

Aha - we have an ICL 2966 mainframe at the museum which we hope to get running
again one day. It's at the smaller end of ICL mainframes - only 40 cabinets :)

We've got a few ICL / Three Rivers PERQ machines too, and of course the
obligatory One Per Desk systems (which used Sinclair QL hardware internally,
just to at least bring this on topic for the thread ;)

> He later told he he had found that all the chips were faulty, but only in
> the top 4K(?) where they were masked by the ROM. So Sinclair was buying
> faulty chips to keep the price down.
>
> Or is that another urban myth?

Consumers could definitely buy them at one point; it was the cheapest way to
get RAM back when it was serious money just for chips with a capacity of few
kbit. Intel certainly did it. This would be late 1970s though, a few years
before the Spectrum's time - but given Sinclair's ability to cost-cut wherever
possible it wouldn't surprise me if he tried it for the speccy, assuming that
RAM suppliers still even sold half-dead parts.

cheers

Jules

--
If you've ever wondered how you get triangles from a cow
You need buttermilk and cheese, and an equilateral chainsaw