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New Re: Alligator memory?
-because the contacts stuck out to the side like alligator legs. That stuff was expensive - and very sensitive to damage from static.
New I never damaged any. :-)

"All around me are nothing but fakes
Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"

New Sounds like some kind of surface mount stuff
like a PLCC with J-leads.

Tony
New Sheesh, you guys don't even know what you missed.
Back in the "good old days", to get 2-Meg into a machine (a lot of memory back then), we had to stuff 72 little black IC's into sockets, each with 18 little legs, 1296 little leges, each with a penchent for curling up rather than going into the socket.

Then, we got to figure out which of the chips had a leg curled under when the machine didn't boot.
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
New No, those are DIPs
which is an appropriate name for them. I've never heard it called alligator memory.

And although I probably don't have your wealth of experience, I've had fun stuffing DIP's of various sorts into sockets. It's also fun when you put in one backwards.

Tony
New That is most fun on an Apple II
You get smoke and exploding chips, and a game of "find the dead ICs".

And no, I never heard of alligator memory either, but I presume he had to mean DIPs,
'cause that's how memory came.

Another Apple II fun was to pull a card with the power on (no fan, so it was easy to do). Pull it a little tilted and it blew every board on the bus plus a few ICs on the main board. I used to know exactly which ones had to be replaced.

Since Apple IIs used the video retrace to refresh RAM, a problem almost anywhere on the main board could cause memory problems.

The Apple II design was pure hacker. If something could be done with obscure cleverness to make it cheaper, that's the way it was done, right down to a software disk controller. Even choice of the 6502 processor was based purely on price - the Intel chips were newer and way faster, so they cost more, so they were unnaceptable to Apple.

They charged a whole lot of money for this pile of crap, and worked hard to build a "mystique" to support the price. Even so, it was VisiCalc, not Apple, that made the Apple II a success (Bricklin wouldn't do a CP/M version because he couldn't copy protect it effectively on such an open platform).
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
New Twas the Wozniak mindset.. in replication. Cute/dumb overall
New After watching this discussion...
... the name does come back to me. And I remembered why I didn't use it, too. I had spent time dabbling in electronics - ICs were DIL* for a long time before the surface mount revolution quite caught on. But if you hadn't dabbled like I had, you wouldn't have seen what DIL chips looked like before they were inserted. Whoever coined the term "alligator memory" obviously hadn't!

Fortunately on the old IBM PC motherboard, if you put on in backwards, it simply didn't work. Turn it around, and it was fine. If you also missed a pin, or missed one side, the same thing: fix it and it worked like a bought one.

Wade.

*DIL = dual in-line, sometimes dual in-line legs. The other term, DIP, was for dual in-line pins and meant the same thing. Two rows of pins down the long sides of a black rectangle of plastic or ceramic. They went through the circuit board (unless you used a socket) and were generally wide enough apart to be able to solder individually.

"All around me are nothing but fakes
Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"

New Spent a summer in high school soldering components on boards
Working for my Dad, who ran a Printed Circuit Board shop.

One of his customers was making full-length 8-bit 512K RAM boards. My job was to insert components (caps, resistors, and sockets for the RAM chips and supporting logic IC's), trim the leads, solder into place and test.

This was early 80's when wave solder and solder masking technologies were rapidly advancing, leading to the surface mount processes we see today. They were also among the first shops to produce multilayer boards in the area.

Unfortuantely, due to the high costs of compliance with EPA regulations and disposal of the waste (primarily potassium cyanide IIRC) from the etching and plating processes, they decided to cease that portion of their business. I'd would have loved to seen firsthand how those technologies developed.
-----
Steve
New DIPS and Tweek\ufffd
Problem with inserting was - friction.

Tweek is a 'contact enhancer' and lubricant as a bonus, came out ~83 (a friend, partner at Sumiko tm'd the name, bought the very expensive active ingredient from a weird Canadian guy - who didn't know how to market it).

In brief - it *really* cures intermittents, especially in sockets, switches handling lo-current, lo-volt signals. Under pressure of the contact forces: substance actually conducts. I always use it on any board slot, chip, etc. I have to deal with (sometimes just putting a drop on already installed ICs and wiggling slightly - works too).

The lube made it easy to insert the DIPS - whose legs were always formed just a bit wide.. for the spacing of the socket.

(Hi end audio shops often stock this - it's same active surfactant as in 'Cramolin Red' - but not same as the also useful Caig cleaners and nostrums)

A.
     THE IBM PC was introduced to the world 20 years ago today - (brettj) - (30)
         On whose doorknob can I hang the dead chicken? -NT - (Ashton)
         Ooh, I remember her - (altmann)
         Re: THE IBM PC - as often with historic reports - simplifies - (dmarker2) - (1)
             Re: Investor history: Tech sector could learn from the '80s - (brettj)
         A working AT? - (Andrew Grygus) - (25)
             pre-XT in mint condition?! - (brettj) - (24)
                 I started out on DOS 1.1 on 360K floppies on a real IBM PC - (tonytib) - (1)
                     I started out on DOS 1.0 on 160K floppies on a real IBM PC. - (a6l6e6x)
                 Well, nearly mint. - (Andrew Grygus) - (21)
                     Re: Chuckle :-) - Businessland !!! remember em well ... - (dmarker2)
                     I worked on original PCs. - (static) - (19)
                         loved pc-write also brown bag software -NT - (boxley)
                         ObAOL Me Too - (deSitter) - (17)
                             While I have no love for Seagate . . - (Andrew Grygus) - (5)
                                 Re: While I have no love for Seagate . . - (deSitter) - (4)
                                     Seagate may have had problems too . . . - (Andrew Grygus) - (3)
                                         Re: Seagate may have had problems too . . . - (dlevitt) - (2)
                                             I seem to remember it was the 10 meg drives - (DonRichards)
                                             Emerald also melted down. - (Andrew Grygus)
                             Alligator memory? - (static) - (10)
                                 Re: Alligator memory? - (deSitter) - (9)
                                     I never damaged any. :-) -NT - (static)
                                     Sounds like some kind of surface mount stuff - (tonytib) - (7)
                                         Sheesh, you guys don't even know what you missed. - (Andrew Grygus) - (6)
                                             No, those are DIPs - (tonytib) - (4)
                                                 That is most fun on an Apple II - (Andrew Grygus) - (1)
                                                     Twas the Wozniak mindset.. in replication. Cute/dumb overall -NT - (Ashton)
                                                 After watching this discussion... - (static) - (1)
                                                     Spent a summer in high school soldering components on boards - (Steve Lowe)
                                             DIPS and Tweek\ufffd - (Ashton)

He's so far to the right of the bell curve he could drop a marble and it wouldn't roll away.
64 ms