Ferrari Mailing List: Re: old times flying in their warbirds

[Hans E. Hansen (FList]

I assume you mean "magnetic core" memory, which was little toroidial
ferrite beads.  Back in the day, all memory attached to the CPU was
referred to as "core" memory, much like people speak of "RAM" today.
This included delay line and spinning drum core memories, which were a
nightmare to time correctly.

Magnetic core memories worked just fine in the era where CPUs were not
that fast.  At one time I was using a PDP 8/12 for homework
assignments.  I always booked time right after a specific student who
had the same assignments, because he would forget to wipe core,
leaving his project there for me to dump and inspect.  Change a few
bytes so it wasn't obvious that I was plagiarizing. Well, maybe it was
obvious, but I didn't get caught.

Later went to an early CDC machine, which also for a time used
magnetic core memory.  They later upgraded it to massive banks
(physical size-wise) of semiconductor memory.

My original trigonometry text book has a photo micrograph of magnetic
cores on it's cover.  I still use that book for certain reference
tables and formulas that it contains.

Hans.

On 8/22/19, Rick Moseley <ramosel [at] pacbell.net> wrote:
> Don't forget the wonderful CORE memory.
>
>> On Aug 22, 2019, at 9:24 AM, Hans E. Hansen <FList [at] hanshansen.org> 
>> wrote:
>>
>> WIRED had an interesting read a month or so ago about the 3 W's (What
>> Went Wong) of the lunar guidance computer.  Turned out it was operator
>> error - Aldrin had a switch that hooked up a radar to the computer
>> turned the wrong way, overloading it with info.  For the return
>> reunion with the command module they turned it back to the correct
>> position.  But it was panic and mayhem until they figured out what was
>> happening.
>>
>> 5600 discreet NOR gates manufactured by Fairchild made up the computer.
>>
>> Hans.
>>
>>> On 8/21/19, Erik Nielsen <judge4re [at] gmail.com> wrote:
>>> The average age of the engineers on Apollo was 26...
>>>
>>
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>