Vintage Computer - Jade Computer Products 1982 Memory Module - and Moore's Law

Bugbooks

WOW!! I never know what I will find in the "Bugbook Computer Musuem" warehouse.  I found a 1982 bill of sale -- see it below --  from "Jade Computer Products" in a box of Styrofoam peanuts used as packing material.   I was packing a computer for shipment from our museum collection and found the this old receipt in shipping material saved from years ago.

Looking at the price of the 32kb memory module from 1982 is very interesting --- It would take 516,000 of these boards to have the 16GB of memory on the USB drive I am using.

David talks about his computer collecting and how he found the piece used in this blog.

Moore's law predicts that the density of  integrated circuits will double about every 2 years. Gordon Moore made this prediction in 1965. The prediction has proven to be so good that it is used in long term planning by in the semiconductor industry to guide long-term planning and to set targets for research and development.

Look below the Jade Computer Products invoice for more interesting and fun calculations.

              "Click" on image  to enlarge for easy reading

The following calculations are comparing the price and size of the Jade 32KB module to a current 16GB USB memory module .

516,000 Jade modules would be needed for 16GB.

$7 million dollars at $169 per  board to have 16 GB of memory. These are 1982 prices it would be much more in today's $. It would really take some deep pockets in those days for 16GB -- now it cost about $12. 

Placed end to end the 516,000 boards would be 100 miles long - the distance from Baltimore to Philadelphia.

The Jade Memory module was sold in 1982 --- one more comparison -- 
John Titus designed the MARK8 microcomputer in 1974 with 4 KB of memory 
This is 1/16 the memory of the Jade board.
These memory boards placed end to end would reach 400 miles - the 
distance from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

1977 prices for Jade Memory 

The price of Jade memory modules seem to have decreased in price by 4 from 1977 to 1982 --See 1977 Jade advertisement to the right.  Click to enlarge the image. 

You can see Moore's law at work here.  




Several Days after writing this bog I was exploring the Museum warehouse for a vintage computer to make a video.
"CLICK" to enlarge

I was looking for a vintage computer I came upon an inventoried item marked Jade Computer Products. I just had to open it and examine the contents.  Holly Cow - I found this loaded with 16 or so Jade invoices,several manuals -- and a dozen other company invoices + 2 Jade S100 cards. The invoice in the above blog is not from this box -- different computer guy.

The fellow that ordered all these Jade products was building a MITS Altair 8800 B and loading it with Jade Computer Products including this S100 buss Memory Bank Card --- almost like the one on the invoice I found in the old packing material discussed above. I do believe I have his MITS Altair 8800B in the warehouse.

Very small world as this was also purchased in 1982 like the invoice found in packing material. The warehouse is just loaded goodies. The software we use is professional museum software called "Past Perfect" and we have about 10,000 entries.  This number is smaller then the actually number of items. This box was probably inventoried showing just the 2 memory cards and a manual. This box also contains 2 sets of Radio Shack memory chips and lots of important papers.

David G Larsen

 Sure fun to look at these vintage computer items. I have more than 45 years of collecting historical microcomputer memorabilia  in the museum warehouse.  I was 30 years old when I started collecting computer artifacts however I started my association with computer at Remington Rand Univac in 1957. Golly guess I must be getting older.
^{"by David Larsen"  KK4WW Computer Collector Historian}   
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