[Jason Dunn]

I've been mucking about with one of my computers this weekend, performing a couple of upgrades to it (details on Monday) and since one of those upgrades was a RAM upgrade, I retired the old RAM. I have a small plastic container that I use to store the old RAM, but I've never organized it into any logical fashion so if I need something I have to squint at tiny labels to figure it all out. Today I took a few minutes and sorted and labelled the RAM groups I have. It's quite funny to see all that RAM together in one place, ranging from the lowly 256 MB PC133 RAM up to the more modern 1 GB PC6400 chips. It's amazing how cheap RAM has become as well - yesterday I picked up 2 x 2 GB sticks of PC26400 RAM for $64.99 CAD. 4 GB of RAM for $65...it's amazing how things have changed. I don't tend to keep too many old part lying around, but RAM is so small it's easy to keep a collection for the occasion when you run across an old computer that could use a boost. What do you do with your old RAM or old PC parts?

[Jason Dunn]

I've been mucking about with one of my computers this weekend, performing a couple of upgrades to it (details on Monday) and since one of those upgrades was a RAM upgrade, I retired the old RAM. I have a small plastic container that I use to store the old RAM, but I've never organized it into any logical fashion so if I need something I have to squint at tiny labels to figure it all out. Today I took a few minutes and sorted and labelled the RAM groups I have. It's quite funny to see all that RAM together in one place, ranging from the lowly 256 MB PC133 RAM up to the more modern 1 GB PC6400 chips. It's amazing how cheap RAM has become as well - yesterday I picked up 2 x 2 GB sticks of PC26400 RAM for $64.99 CAD. 4 GB of RAM for $65...it's amazing how things have changed. I don't tend to keep too many old part lying around, but RAM is so small it's easy to keep a collection for the occasion when you run across an old computer that could use a boost. What do you do with your old RAM or old PC parts?

[Joel Crane]

I label my extra ram with masking tape and put it in my box of PC parts. Right now I only have extra PC100 64mb modules, I never have had enough 128mb and 256mb modules to go around between all my older (But still useful) machines.

[Janak Parekh]

Great post!

I do memory upgrades much less now than when I actively built machines, but in general, the memory usually got tossed in a box somewhere. I suspect lots are sitting in my parents' basement.

Anyone remember the 16Kb (that is kilobit, not kilobyte) chips used in the original IBM PC? You'd install 9 chips (not SIMMs, not DIMMs, chips!) to get 16KB (16Kb * 8 + 1 parity chip). There were 36 sockets for a total of 64KB. Those were the days, and man, was it annoying. Chips lasted way longer than they should have. It was by far the worst part of assembling a PC, installing those 36 chips to get anywhere from 64KB to 1MB of RAM. Bent pins, oh the pain...

--janak

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by Janak Parekh

Anyone remember the 16Kb (that is kilobit, not kilobyte) chips used in the original IBM PC?

Haha...wow. I've worked on some old computers in my life, but I've never worked on a machine that old. I think when that computer was out, I was still an Apple guy. An Apple clone guy that is.

[Darius Wey]

Originally Posted by Jason Dunn

What do you do with your old RAM or old PC parts

As I discovered recently, I place them in a box, waiting to be discovered years later.

http://twitter.com/dariuswey/status/2516897578

[The Yaz]

My spare computer parts do not hang around for very long in my home. When I make an upgrade (or retire a whole machine) I bring the parts to my kid's school. Their equipment can always use more memory, spare cd drives, power supplies, etc.

I've even purchased daughter boards to get enough slots to make the smaller memory useful. On one of the school's computers I've got 16 slots filled with 64mb chips! (I had to install an extra fan to cool the box ).

Its probably cheaper to just get fresh ram in t first place, but definetly not as muh fun!

Steve

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by The Yaz

I've even purchased daughter boards to get enough slots to make the smaller memory useful. On one of the school's computers I've got 16 slots filled with 64mb chips! (I had to install an extra fan to cool the box ).

Hehe...sweet. That's so geeky, it's cool.

[Reid Kistler]

Recycle as much as possible - and RAM seems to "always" be in demand, so have only a handful of chips around at any given time - although also with a fair number of "suspect" ones.

And buying older ram chips is Expensive. Am upping wife's machine from 1GB to 2GB, partially due to loading Win7 on it, and partially because one of the existing (512MB No-Name) chips appears to be failing: PC3200 RAM is mostly in the $70 - $90 range for 2 x 1GB chips! (Or roughly twice as much as the earlier mentioned PC26400 chips.... )

Greater problem now is OLD HARD DRIVES: have a number of drives in the 4-12GB range which appear to be essentially USELESS. To say nothing of the half-dozen or so that are UNDER 1GB (and mostly under 500MB....).

In fact, am in the process of removing files from a 20GB HD that is mounted in an Ext Case: the drive is simply too small to be viable as a Back-Up anymore... .... although am hoping it will find life as a second drive Somewhere.

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by rkistler

Greater problem now is OLD HARD DRIVES: have a number of drives in the 4-12GB range which appear to be essentially USELESS. To say nothing of the half-dozen or so that are UNDER 1GB (and mostly under 500MB....).

I know what you mean - I'm staring at SIX hard drives on my desk that I have ZERO use for. Of course, the smallest one is 400 GB.

[Reid Kistler]

Quote:
I'm staring at SIX hard drives on my desk that I have ZERO use for. Of course, the smallest one is 400 GB.

The SMALLEST?!?!?!

We have Precisely ONE HD that EXCEEDS 400GB - and that is a 750GB External Back-up!

In fact, think we have only ONE MACHINE with over 400GB installed internally - don't think wife's Quite Makes it to 400, from memory, and nothing else would be even close. Feeling altogether downtrodden & poverty stricken now...

(Hmmm: that I have ZERO use for... May be time for a Give Away??? )