4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery

[Brent Hilpert]

"Roy J. Tellason" wrote:
> 
> On Saturday 13 October 2007 10:46, dwight elvey wrote:
> > Package size was always a dominating cost and defined many projects.
> 
> I've often wondered why it is that 14-pin packages seemed to dominate the
> early parts so much.  Why they never offered,  for example,  a dual 2-input
> gate package instead of the more common quad,  or other combinations like
> that.  It seemed sometimes that things were altered a bit to fit into those
> 14-pin packages that they wanted to use...

There was a brief period (early-mid 60s) were packaging was as you suggest,
early RTL ICs were in 8 or 10 pin cans and flat-paks with typically two gates
per package. As densities increased there was little point though, when
building systems with hundreds or thousands of gates, 2-gates per package just
increased the package count and the potential wastage of 2 unused gates in a
quad pack just wasn't a concern.

> And I don't lay any claim to having any kind of a clue about what factors
> dominated the economics of things back then.  :-)