[sdiy] returning to the chronic disappointment of the 1496...

[Tom Farrand]

If I recall, that was around late 1976 or early 1977.  I never quite
got my 8008 (no, not 8080) system to work consistently.  That is why I
got pissed at Intel and went with Zilog.  The Z-80 actually worked.
(PCBs with plated-through holes helped a lot, too.)  The EPROM of
choice was a 1702 and they cost a fortune.  Later, I switched to 2708s
at about $40 a pop.  A little later, names like Cromemco and TDL hit
the scene.  Cromemco was expensive but pretty nice stuff.  Like synth
stuff you could get boards, kits, or fully assembled.  There were even
synth boards available which is partially how I got interested in
music.  In maybe 1981 I got to spend a week at Cromemco for business
reasons.  Really nice people and a class outfit.

That is all very nice, but the main point is that electronic
components these days are as cheap as dirt.  My current product design
will use a microcontroller with 96K RAM, 512K of flash, Ethernet, USB
Host and OTG, external memory for expansion, six serial ports, and a
boatload of other peripherals.  It costs about $8 in small quantities.
 I think that is quite a bargain.   There are many such items out
there and I love it!  Of course, all things are relative.  A phenolic
knob costs $2.25 which is nonsense, CA3080s are unobtanium, but you
can buy a 2 gig MP3 player for like $15.  A USB thumb drive has a ton
of memory in addition to an ARM processor and can be had for seven
bucks.  To me, knobs, jacks, wire, and metal panels are the expensive
stuff.  What is behind the panel is organized sand priced ... as
organized sand!

Peace.
Tom Farrand


On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 9:23 AM, Ingo Debus <igg.debus at t-online.de> wrote:
>
> Am 15.01.2010 um 01:41 schrieb Tom Farrand:
>
>> No, a Z-80A I paid $200
>> for was "prohibitively expensive" when I was making < $8/hour!
>
> Huh? When was that?
>
> Ingo
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