Cost of a 2GB DIMM in 1995?

[draco2527]

I found this interesting...

NEWS from CPSC
U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
Office of Information and Public Affairs Washington, DC 20207

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Media Relations
May 30, 1996 (301) 504-7908
Release # 96-137


CPSC, Kingston Technology Announce Recall of Kingston DIMM Module for IBM ThinkPads
WASHINGTON, D.C. In cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), Kingston Technology Corporation of Fountain Valley, Calif., is recalling about 27,000 memory modules designed and sold by Kingston for use exclusively with IBM ThinkPad 760 L, LD, C & CD Notebook Computers. The modules may cause a short circuit and result in overheating, smoke, and possibly fire.

Kingston has received one report of a short circuit occurring in an IBM ThinkPad 760 computer, which resulted in overheating. Kingston and CPSC are not aware of any injuries or property damage involving the memory module.

The Kingston KTM-TP760/16 DIMM (Dual Inline Memory Module) is a 16 megabyte memory upgrade. The module, measuring 1 inch by 3.5 inches, fits into a compartment on the bottom of the computer and is sold separately.

Distributors, major reseller chains, and independent dealers sold the DIMM modules worldwide from November 1995 through May 1996 at list prices ranging from $500 to $950. No other Kingston products and no IBM products are involved in this recall.

AT THE LOWEST PRICE per the article and using a 2GB DIMM sold today; it would have had a cost of $62,500.00!!!

I remember my first 1GB of RAM sitting in my hand (4X256MB) purchased for a server at work and it was $25K in the late 90's

How times have changed...

[The Spirit of X21]

It's amazing how much machine you get for the money you pay in this day and age. In 1990 you could get a Mac IIfx for $10,000 with a 40MHz Motorola '040 and 4MB RAM!

[rkawakami]

It's even worse when you've been in the memory business for... let's see... umm... well, since 1979 (gulp!). Back then I wasn't doing anything with DRAM but I think the big item was 16Kb (bits!). My first exposure to DRAM testing was around 1985 with 64Kb. Prices, I believe, were around $2/part. Extrapolating to 1GB, that would make it $262,144. And that's at the end of the price curve for 64Kb devices. When they were first introduced in volume, the cost was closer to $10/part.

Look at it this way: when the IBM PC XT came along with 640KB of memory, it could do amazing amounts of things with that much memory. Today, a single image in your 3MP digital camera and one minute of an average .MP3 file is typically about 1MB in size.

[kensplace]

A Rampack for the sinclair zx81 cost just short of 50 uk pounds, and it had a huge 16 KiloBytes of memory....

I paid 50 uk pounds for a 256K Sipp module (similar to a SIM but they have pins soldered instead of a edge connector) for my first 286 motherboard (and that was cheap, at a computer fair).

Hard drives are similar, I remember when I was working at a software firm years ago, very early 90's they got a hard drive (I think it was either 4 or 8 gig, cant recall which) - we were amazed at the size of it, but it did cost a few thousand pounds back then..

20 Megabyte drives cost more than a 500 Gig drive does now...

Nowadays, memory and hard drives, that we thought 'huge' back then, are laughably small compared to what you can get very cheaply. Problem is, software is getting slower, operating systems getting more bloated, and we are not seeing the speed increases we should be seeing due to that.

[qviri]

Nowadays, memory and hard drives, that we thought 'huge' back then, are laughably small compared to what you can get very cheaply. Problem is, software is getting slower, operating systems getting more bloated, and we are not seeing the speed increases we should be seeing due to that.

Speed increases in what, opening a new Explorer window? Anything computing-intensive (superPI, Folding@Home, etc) is certainly getting faster and faster.

[GomJabbar]

Around 1989, my younger brother went to work for IBM. He bought an IBM PS/2 model 70 386 desktop with the employee discount and bought the 4 Mb of RAM upgrade. Total cost? ~$10,000.

A fellow employee told him he would never use all that RAM.