4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery

[Roy J. Tellason]

On Saturday 13 October 2007 16:01, jim s wrote:
> Roy J. Tellason wrote:
> >I've often wondered why it is that 14-pin packages seemed to dominate the
> >early parts so much.
>
> There was a company started up in the 1971 or 1972 time frame in
> Columbia, Missouri that made a splash in the IC market by offering "cheap"
> parts.  It was Solid State Industries, or SSI and sold a pretty good mix of
> 7400 IC's.  They bought the die and packaged them in Columbia.  The big cost
> was the packaging machine at the time.

I may have even heard of them somewhere along the line,  though I'm not 
certain.

> That is to some degree what dictated their choices of what to package,
> since they eliminated the actual silicon fab from their business model.

Interesting bit of history there.

> They kept up for a while but eventually were wiped out the eventual drop
> of prices to a few cents.

I remember that drop,  I used to look at the ads in the back of magazines like 
Popular Electronics and such,  where something like a 7400 went from a couple 
of dollars down and down and down,  eventually getting to the point of around 
10 cents or so for one.  And then LSTTL came into the picture and complicated 
the heck out of things,  and they've been getting more so ever since then.

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