In 1993, when the worth of 256k SIMMs was just approaching their weight in sand, I had a huge bag of them from doing upgrades to an enormous buncha machines at the EnormoCorp where I was working. One day I was sitting in my room trying to decide whether I should throw out this old ratty black jean jacket I had, when inspiration struck! I spent like five days of free time sewing those SIMMs to the jacket in a form of chain mail. I have to admit, when worn with my motorcycle helmet and Darth Vader leather riding gauntlets, I looked pretty damn bad-ass, aside from being chubby. People on the highway used to do great doubletakes when I went by them on my bike.

The problem was, I found a few weeks later (as those who have RAM chip keychains have also discovered) that the PC boards that make up the SIMMs were fairly robust, but the solder holding the actual RAM chips to the boards wasn't...I started getting like chain mail mange as chips popped off. You could tell when I'd been over because you'd be finding little legless RAM chips in your sofa cushions. Finally, a few months later, most of them were gone. The PC boards themselves still looked pretty cool, but by that point the jacket had deteriorated so much that it shredded when I caught it on a bannister.

Ah well. Still, if only for a few weeks, techno-bad-assery was mine!

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.