What part of "I was one of 100 High School Students in the United States in the mid 60s selected by Bell Labs to participate in some of their projects such as making our own transistors. . . and then later participate in voice creation via electronics." did you fail to grasp? Were you so selected? I doubt it.
My point is seems to have been beyond your grasp that the RETAIL PRICE of $1298 which YOU were complaining about as being too expensive is INCLUSIVE of that board plus your $220 of DRAM chips. . . try counting all those components you claim to know what they do, add the cost of acquiring all of them, plus the sockets for the socketed ones, then add in the printing of a double sided circuit board, add design costs, add manufacturing costs including labor, overhead, advertising, and whole host of costs you don't seem to have a clue about, including federal licensing from a bunch of regulatory agencies who have to sign-off on several things, and state and federal taxes, and then YOU tell me if it is too expensive or not. I think they did a remarkable thing in building it in the USA for as low a cost as they did.
And, yes, Steve Wozniak did a phenomenal job, with help, in designing that board and everything else. But Steve Jobs did another phenomenal job of all the rest in making it come together to get the PRODUCT made. . . and frankly, all-in-all, that was probably the harder job.
About this, I think we will have to respectfully disagree. Perhaps I will see more information in the future that will enlighten me as to the brilliance of Steve Jobs, but so far the more I learn about him, the less I like or appreciate him. I think he's earned his accolades to the same extent that Barack Obama earned his Nobel prize.
Woz I like. Jobs I don't. Tim Cook also sucks, (Literally) as does the attitude of the entire Tech Industry lately.
Fortunately, from my perspective, i'm hearing ominous rumblings coming out of Silicon Valley. Perhaps their attitudes will soon undergo a realistic correction.