So here I am looking for cheap sram. Use to be that 486s and the like used sram chips as cache so they were a good source as nobody really wanted their old motherboards. Now-a-days I can't find any mother boards, not even on craigstlist! So where have all the old motherboards gone? Thin air a guess.
So I'm eye-balling some cmos sram from futurlec and I'm thinking... naw probably not. Where can a girl get sram around here? Where do you get your sram?
small complaint
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- Posts: 26
- Joined: Thu Apr 09, 2009 3:56 pm
Re: small complaint
I still have old stock - 2-3 cubic meters of old motherboards. Also, hard drives ( es.SCSI ) and sometimes CDROMs are a good source of fast SRAM if you don't mind SMD packages.
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- Posts: 44
- Joined: Tue Mar 31, 2009 8:50 pm
Re: small complaint
cd-roms, huh? I've never desoldered a surface-mount chip so might be good practice.... looks around bin for cd-rom drives.
- westfw
- Posts: 2010
- Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2007 1:01 pm
Re: small complaint
http://www.jameco.com seems to still carry the cache-like sram chips, as well as the "low power" chips that were usually used with batteries to get non-volatile memory.
They stopped appearing on motherboards with the pentium (which has internal cache), and 486 or earlier motherboards are getting pretty hard to find, even if you DO find a stash of motherboards. Cisco routers used to use a fair amount of such SRAM as well; the cache-like chips got used for "microcode" storage on the async interfaces in the 2511 series "terminal servers" for instance...
What kind of specs and quantity are you looking for?
They stopped appearing on motherboards with the pentium (which has internal cache), and 486 or earlier motherboards are getting pretty hard to find, even if you DO find a stash of motherboards. Cisco routers used to use a fair amount of such SRAM as well; the cache-like chips got used for "microcode" storage on the async interfaces in the 2511 series "terminal servers" for instance...
What kind of specs and quantity are you looking for?
- macegr
- Posts: 293
- Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2008 4:46 pm
Re: small complaint
Maybe just buy new SRAM. In the few-tens-of-K range, it's really cheap. Microchip even has some new SRAM out that interfaces over SPI, saves you a lot of pins if you have an application that needs a lot of rewritable storage that won't degrade after 100,000 writes.
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- Posts: 44
- Joined: Tue Mar 31, 2009 8:50 pm
Re: small complaint
wow, thanks for the jameco link! This looks nice, little pricey, but nice.
http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores ... tId=242448&
http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores ... tId=242448&
- amberwolf
- Posts: 310
- Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2008 2:42 am
Re: small complaint
I'm not sure if I still have them, but I might have a box full of those old ISA memory boards, with rows of socketed DIP SRAM chips. Most were from 8-bit ISA systems, so they'd be pretty small chips, but there was at least one of them that used the (I think) 6116 SRAM chip, 2Kx8bit IIRC, with several rows.
I also am pretty sure I still have an old STB video card with socketed SRAM chips totalling 1MB, in 8 chips, so probably 1Mbit each. They were a form of SIP, with interleaved pins making two very closely spaced rows.
I also am pretty sure I still have an old STB video card with socketed SRAM chips totalling 1MB, in 8 chips, so probably 1Mbit each. They were a form of SIP, with interleaved pins making two very closely spaced rows.
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- Posts: 44
- Joined: Tue Mar 31, 2009 8:50 pm
Re: small complaint
wow, amberwolf. Name your price. The ram on the video card sounds very nice.
- amberwolf
- Posts: 310
- Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2008 2:42 am
Re: small complaint
If I find it (which might take a while), you can have it for whatever shipping would be to you from 85051. I suspect it'd all fit in a USPS flat rate box, boards and all, in ESD bags with padding (if I have any left, I'd use the paper stuff I got last time I ordered parts from Mouser/etc). If you happen to have any lightweight bike parts laying around, or high-brightness red LEDs I can use for taillights/brakelights, things like that, I wouldn't be averse to a trade, but it's not necessary. I'm never going to use this stuff, and someone that will ought to have it (it's how I get almost everything I use, especially the stuff on my Electricle™bike project).
Keep in mind that it's probably been at least 10 years since I've seen this stuff, much less actually had it in a working computer. So I couldnt' guarantee any of them working (or even that I still have them in a findable spot!).
Keep in mind that it's probably been at least 10 years since I've seen this stuff, much less actually had it in a working computer. So I couldnt' guarantee any of them working (or even that I still have them in a findable spot!).
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.