How big of a room would a Macintosh 128k fill if you expanded every single microchip so that each circuit path is the width of a thin piece of wire? My estimate would be that each expanded microchip would cover the floor of a largish room, so if you factor in cooling systems like fans, etc. to keep the wires from melting, I figure...maybe a small gym?
What are your thoughts?

-Apostrophe

Click to expand...

Well the MC68000 processor has approximately 68000 transistors, if Wikipedia can be trusted. If you figure one half of a square inch of proto-board per transistor and associated circuitry, then the CPU would cover 32000 square inches of board or 222 square feet. Taking a guess that the rest of the 128K circuitry(1) does not substantially more circuitry then you could figure about 500 square feet of perf-board and wire wrap.

(1) Of course the 128K of memory has 1,024,000+ bits of memory which uses at least one transistor per bit. So the memory alone would consume another 3640 square feet of board. Clearly, most of the transistors are in the memory. If you allow surface mount technology and printed circuit boards, that 1/2 square inch per transistor can be reduced considerably.