Subject: Re: Are any SIMMs cheap these day$ ? From: morley@suncad.camosun.bc.ca (Mark Morley) Date: 1 Aug 1993 14:05:35 PDT
Here in Victoria, RAM was about $45-50 Canadian per meg before the prices went
up. A 4 meg simm was about $230. A friend and I (who sell computers on
the side) heard from one of our dealers that RAM was going up. "How
much?", sez we. "Oh, it'll likely double!", sez he. Now... have you ever
thought to yourself, _after_ something like this happens: "Gee. I shoulda
bought up a ton of simms and then resold them..." Well, the day after we
heard that RAM would be going up, we went to the bookstore of the college
where we work. We asked how much RAM he had in stock. He brought out
everything he had. "How much do you want?", he asks. "_All_ of it.", we
said. "GASP!", he said. We bought close to $8000 worth of 1 and 4 meg simms,
cleared out his entire stock. Stupid, huh? We didn't even _have_ that much
money! I think between the two of us we _might_ have been able to cough up
$500. I think that's the most impulsive thing I've ever done. I was
terrified thinking of how I was going to explain this to my wife when I got
home! So was he. We took our box of memory up to our office where we sat
and stared at it for quite some time. "Wow.", said I. "Yikes!", said he.
"Now what?", I asked. We got on the phone and called a couple computer
shops. "Want some RAM?", we asked. "YES!", they said. By the end
of the day (conveniently it was the very day that the price of RAM rose
dramatically) we had sold it all (only took 2 phone calls). Not only
that, but we sold it at a far higher price then we paid for it! It was
still cheaper (for them) than what it cost them elsewhere. I was
able to upgrade my 486 to 16 megs, and my 386 to 8 megs, without having to
pay a cent out of my own pocket. We also made enough to buy a couple of
computers from the same bookstore for our side business (boy was the
bookstore guy a happy camper!) YES! It had worked! Whew.
Days later my friend and I were sipping cokes on a coffee break. "Can you
believe we did that?", said he. "We're crazy.", said I. "Yup", said he.
"This is good coke.", said I.
ObLinux: The two machines I was able to upgrade are both Linux boxes running
SLS 1.02. What a difference the extra RAM makes! Has anyone gone beyond
16 megs with Linux? Is it worth it? Can the kernel handle it?
PS: It turned out to be rather easy to tell my wife about buying all the RAM.
The hard part was explaining why we spent all the profit on even more
"computer junk".
====================================================================
Mark Morley, SUN Guy NET: morley@camosun.bc.ca
Camosun College - Interurban Campus TEL: (604) 370-4601
4461 Interurban Road Room 143-Tech FAX: (604) 370-3660
Victoria, B.C. Canada V8X 3X1
** If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving isn't for you! **