Even Commodores Vic20, which appeared years later, uses easy-to-design-for static memory ICs. What was behind the decision to use dynamic RAM?
Woz: I switched to dynamic RAMs when someone at our club sold some for a couple of bucks each. After all, in 1975 these were the first RAMS cheaper than core memory, the 4K dynamics. I bought some 22 pin AMI ones, there were three vendors. Virtually none of the other hobby computers around that time used dynamic RAMs, I decided it was because of the hobbyist technician sense of most fans I met, they weren’t true engineers. Also, they were familiar with low-cost routes like surplus stores where the favorite RAM was the 2102 static. But for me, designing for the dynamic RAM was a piece of cake and I had fun at that which I excelled, combining MSI chips in clever ways. Steve Jobs asked what did I think of the Intel dynamic RAMs. I told him I felt they were the best. Although they required more driving circuitry for Row and Column addressing (not just a wire from the CPU for each address line) they were in a smaller package. I had for some time measured the worth of my IC designs in terms
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