"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 15 Oct 2018 08:57:09 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:


It was functionally similar to an Altair or PDP-8. The company was
very supportive of my effort to learn computer engineering and
programming and gave me the 8080 CPU and some samples of 6116 (2K x
8)
CMOS memory that I kept alive with NiCads so I wouldn't have to
enter
the bootstrap loader each time. ...

I always wondered why Terry didn't rig something like that, because
hand loading was a PITA.


I started with power-hungry 256x4 SRAM. I don't know when the 6116
became available but I got the samples around the time the PC-XT was
introduced. The company built RAM test stations for major
manufacturers and received pre-production samples of new product to
evaluate. IIRC the samples I had were slower than production versions.