old RAM chips

I helped an old scientist clean out some electronics equipment that was gathering dust in his closets.
I'm new to this, and I know very little about RAM chips, but I think these things are beautiful.
Purple ceramic, gold pins, silver colored heat sink

I did some research on the manufacturer: SEMi

SEMi was a subsidiary of the company Electronic Memories & Magnetics Corp. -- an integrated circuit maker with government/military contracts in the 70s and early 80s. In 1985 SEMi was bought by another military contractor named Titan Systems -- now a part of L-3 Communications.

Based on that history, I would guess that these chips must be at least 25-30 years old.

Here is a link to some photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/48865091@N04/

If anyone knows anything more about the company SEMi or these chips in particular -- history/value/applications etc. -- I'd love to learn more. As mentioned above, I'm very new to this so even very basic facts and figures would be appreciated.

Those are IC(integrated circuit) chips. They usually go for 5-6.00 a pound, but those may bring more because of the gold plated connectors. I usually check Ebay for the older stuff because some of it has a higher value to collectors.

Those are awesome!

Or you could send them to me for further study...hehehe. Serously a great find. How many did you get? Mike.

Those are beautiful EM.....can't weight to see opinions of our buyers and rbrooks. Congratulations. What else did you get. And how did you find this old gentleman.

I love how EM speaks so poetically about circuit boards and chips. I would love to crack a Sam Adams while parting out computers with him.

If im not mistaking thos are old CPU chips. Or IC chips. They are not in the same category as the $6 a pound chips but more in the $100 plus a pound category. I could be wrong and if I am please correct me. I think those might be something you want to find a collector to buy.

I think Electric Metal just had a heart attack !!!

EM, here is a mixed lot that sold on ebay http://www.ebay.com/itm/Scrap-Cpu-Hi...item3cc151dc78

I think i see those chips in the bottom left

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PartTimeScrapper

If im not mistaking thos are old CPU chips. Or IC chips. They are not in the same category as the $6 a pound chips but more in the $100 plus a pound category. I could be wrong and if I am please correct me. I think those might be something you want to find a collector to buy.

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Yeppers, those would be in the $80-$100 or more per pound range. Very nice find.

Many thanks for the nice comments.
@ D-D
I met him through a CL add offering to pickup old electronics gathering dust etc. It was definitely my coolest E-cycling adventure yet. He lived in a beautiful home cantilevered off the side of a mountain near the UC Berkeley campus -- very cool views of Oakland, the Bay and San Francisco. He was (or maybe still is) an engineer/scientist at the UC Berkeley Space Science Laboratory (SSL) -- the address was listed on many of the old boxes he gave me. SSL is a fascinating institution that does NASA/military research. Edward Teller was one of the first lab directors in the late 1950s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Sciences_Laboratory
I have no idea why he gave me all this stuff. I guess he just wanted to clean out the house.

@ Miked
He gave me boxes of stuff and 15 of these chips were stored in a couple of special static-free trays.
I'll take some photos of some other stuff in the boxes.

I also posted over at the CPU-World forum to get some insights about these chips. In about 10 minutes I got an interesting tidbit of info from a guy in Estonia.
They are apparently static RAM (SRAM) chips made during week 26 of 1977.
http://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17719

The web has made communication/info-sharing so awesome.
I've only been doing E-cycling for a couple of weeks, but Silicon Valley seems to be a wonderfully rich area for this sort of thing.

Quite a story EM. I love views of the bay...could you see the bridge. I can't believe you've only been looking for two weeks and you get this. I'm very happy for you.

@ D-D
Bay Bridge -- yes.
Golden Gate -- no.
Thanks again.

Those chips were made before I was born. Man that is an awesome find (coming from an IT guy... haha)

minimum of $100.00 per lb up to $140 or so