Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!gatech!uflorida!umd5!uvaarpa!virginia!kesmai!dca
From: dca@kesmai.COM (David C. Albrecht)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Ram Chips...
Summary: Oh come on.
Keywords: Cost, Price, OHMYGOD!, IThinkI'mGonnaBarf
Message-ID: <168@kesmai.COM>
Date: 25 May 88 23:44:52 GMT
References: <724@csm9a.UUCP> <1294@sbcs.sunysb.edu>
Organization: Kesmai Corporation, Charlottesville, VA
Lines: 30

In article <1294@sbcs.sunysb.edu>, root@sbcs.sunysb.edu (root) writes:
> 	
> 	First thing I would do is write a letter to the US Gov't expressing
> 	your concern about how they have messed up..  And how you are going
> 	to remember this come election time.  Send two more letters to
> 	TI and perhaps Micron Technology thanking them for their lobbying
> 	efforts and helping raise semiconductor prices.  Explain to them
> 	how much better you'll sleep at night knowing that you've paid
> 	out $17/256K and that they will finally be able to pay off obsolete
> 	process lines.  Then drop a line to Toshiba, Nec, etc thanking them 
> 	for dumping 256K chips.  And don't neglect a few letters to the media 
> 	for publishing all the hype about Toshiba. 
> 
Oh come on.  Aren't you being just a tad bit naive blaming this all on the
government price fixing arrangement?  I certainly won't debate the idiocy
of such price fixing long after any native DRAM production facilities have
departed to overseas or shut down.  Despite the idiocy of the decision I
somehow doubt it has had that pronuounced an effect on curtailing expansion.
Some affect is likely, this much of an affect? uh huh right.  You yourself
stated that DRAMS are getting just as hard to get overseas as they are here.
Sounds like some people being caught flat footed to me.
More likely what we are seeing is an unfortunate outgrowth of the cyclical
nature of the semi-conducter market which periodically blooms so that everyone
ramps up production and then goes bust.  Since new production lines are very
expensive and take time to get going, apparently the usual approach is to
upgrade lines.  Those neat new 1MBits are stealing lines from the old 256Kbits
etc.  In general, the growth in memory on computers and the popularity of
computers has made demand outstrip supply.

David Albrecht