Just because I felt like doing the calculations:
Mitre installed VM/370 on a 1/2 megabyte 370/145 (1973), upgraded to a one
megabyte 370/148 (1975 or so). I handled upgrading both processors' memories:
the 145 by 1/4 megabyte, the 148 by a full (!) megabyte. I vaguely remember
that both upgrades cost about $30,000. It also took a while to evaluate
competing vendors; in both cases we installed non-IBM add-on memory, an
interesting engineering process in itself.
So non-core 145 memory cost $0.11444/byte and 148 memory cost $0.02861/byte.
Phil Smith III said:
Ok, this is obscure to the max, but: ISTR real core costing $1/byte.
Someone else says:
"$1 a byte was extrordinarily cheap for 1971. Ferrite core was going for
up to $2 per BIT."
Of course, he then goes on to talk about PDPs, so maybe he's talking
about core made in Maynard instead of Mexico...
Anyway: do any of the other old-timers remember anything about this?
--
Gabriel Goldberg, Computers and Publishing, Inc. (703) 204-0433
3401 Silver Maple Place, Falls Church, VA 22042 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
