On Tuesday 17 December 2024 07:15:59 am wn4isx via groups.io wrote:
I just threw away a 1k (1024) magnetic core plane driven by TTL. It dated from 1968. The college of engineering was tossing it in 1976 and I thought it might be useful. Wired it to a KIM-2.? It worked by what a headache
The Chyron (TV charater generator) at the university medica center had 5 core planes, stacked, they were 2 feet by 2 feet and 3k each for a total of 9k.
The 8" floppy drive was so stupid if the system issued a command change from track 20 to track 21 it backed the haed all the way back to track zero then stepped forward 21 tracks. sounded like a supressed maching gun. We replaced it with a dumb PC [original 5 slot IBM PC] with a 5meg hard file and the production people were so happy they wanted to have it's babies.
Somewhere i have several 4" squares I cut from one of the magnetic planes.
Core plane worked amazing well given how primative it was.
I hope it's not coming back.
We had a demonstration of TI's magenetic bubble memory....that crashed everytime the engineer tried ti rurn the program.
Magnets belong in compasses and children's toys,not computer memory!
There is some talk in one of the test equipment groups (I forget if it's HPAK or Tek) about replacing some of the currently battery backed memory (currently some kind of Dallas chip I think) with what they're calling a ferromagnetic chip, so there's something of the sort out there.
I remember years ago when some of the surplus junk places would offer a core plane for sale. I never got one, but I think it'd be kinda neat to have one hanging on the wall in here.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
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Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
