OT: Help with mysterious part

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SWISSNIXIE - Jonathan F.

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May 20, 2020, 4:42:31 PM5/20/20
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Hi guys,

I know this is kind of OT, but I've noticed that a lot of people here are way older than me, and therefore know more about vintage tech.

This item is sitting around in my house for quite some time, but i have no idea what exactly it is. See attached images. I'm guessing it has something to do with memory. The small dip-looking parts around the device are diodes that look upright and are all connected to a common source. No markings about part number or manufacturer. The structure under the plexi-glass looks like something woven out of wire or a grid or something. It also looks like wires are going into a black material.


Any idea what it is, how old it is, or in what it was used?

Thanks!

20200520_223401.jpg
20200520_223343.jpg

Benoit Bleau

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May 20, 2020, 4:48:54 PM5/20/20
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That's an old magnetic-core memory board.  I couldn't say for which computer it was designed for though.



-Benoit

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seaforth23

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May 20, 2020, 4:50:00 PM5/20/20
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Hi, It is a large "Core store" memory module. If you look carefully at the "fabric" you should see it consists of tiny ferrite rings with several thin copper wires threaded through them. If you search "core store memory" you will see all about it!

Jeff Walton

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May 20, 2020, 4:55:55 PM5/20/20
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It's a magnetic core memory board. 
Used in the 50s and 60s before semiconductor memory. 


Jeff

gregebert

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May 20, 2020, 5:19:23 PM5/20/20
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That's a NICE one ! Much larger than the ones I see for sale online.

It has zero practical use because it could only be a few kbytes , but it is a great museum piece. Today, you could store many terabytes in the same area.

If you really want to do some experimenting, you could trace-out the X, Y, and sense lines, and experiment with the core-storage. Plenty of information online.

gregebert

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May 20, 2020, 6:08:47 PM5/20/20
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As best I can tell, it looks like a 256x18 array, which probably has 2 bits of parity.

I was told years ago these cores were threaded by hand.

Years ago I played with a PDP-8, that was fully-loaded with 12K words of memory. You could hear the cores squealing when the CPU was not halted.

alb.001 alb.001

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May 20, 2020, 7:36:51 PM5/20/20
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Early core plane memories were made by women weavers. Later, IBM developed a machine to make them - much faster to produce and way cheaper.

Pharma Phil

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Bill van Dijk

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May 20, 2020, 8:28:17 PM5/20/20
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Most people have heard the term “core dump”, and some even use it without any idea where that came from. Those old computers worked slow, taking sometimes several days to work on a single program. When a “bug” developed (seriously, bugs shorting out things happened) the computer was stopped, repaired, and a core dump was done. Remember, these magnetic cores kept their data, not like solid state RAM. From the core dump it was determined where the program stopped. And often it could be restarted where it left off, saving having to restart.

 

Now you know……..Bill

 

From: neoni...@googlegroups.com [mailto:neoni...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of SWISSNIXIE - Jonathan F.
Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2020 4:43 PM
To: neonixie-l <neoni...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [neonixie-l] OT: Help with mysterious part

 

Hi guys,

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Ian Vine

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May 20, 2020, 10:15:06 PM5/20/20
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Great example of core memory. 

Interesting about the core dump. I guess that would even work after a power failure. 

IanV

On 21 May 2020, at 01:28, Bill van Dijk <theold...@gmail.com> wrote:



gregebert

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May 20, 2020, 10:23:14 PM5/20/20
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On Wednesday, May 20, 2020 at 7:15:06 PM UTC-7, iavine wrote:
Great example of core memory. 

Interesting about the core dump. I guess that would even work after a power failure. 

IanV


That depends.....reading from a core-memory is destructive, just like a DRAM, so the data has to be rewritten. If the power failure only allowed the read cycle, then the contents of 1 location is probably  lost.

alb.001 alb.001

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May 20, 2020, 10:26:19 PM5/20/20
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My  Wang Labs calculator has a core plane memory for programs.  When it did very long calculations, it could be turned off at the end of the day. The next day, you turn it on and a red lamp turns on to remind you that it is still in the middle of a calculation and continues until a result was displayed on it's nixie tube read-outs.  So nothing in memory was lost when the power was turned off !.  Very cool.

Pharma Phil

---------- Original Message ----------
From: 'Ian Vine' via neonixie-l <neoni...@googlegroups.com>
Date: May 20, 2020 at 10:15 PM

Great example of core memory. 

Interesting about the core dump. I guess that would even work after a power failure. 

IanV

On 21 May 2020, at 01:28, Bill van Dijk <theold...@gmail.com> wrote:



Most people have heard the term “core dump”, and some even use it without any idea where that came from. Those old computers worked slow, taking sometimes several days to work on a single program. When a “bug” developed (seriously, bugs shorting out things happened) the computer was stopped, repaired, and a core dump was done. Remember, these magnetic cores kept their data, not like solid state RAM. From the core dump it was determined where the program stopped. And often it could be restarted where it left off, saving having to restart.

 

Now you know........Bill

 

From: neoni...@googlegroups.com [mailto:neoni...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of SWISSNIXIE - Jonathan F.
Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2020 4:43 PM
To: neonixie-l <neoni...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [neonixie-l] OT: Help with mysterious part

 

Hi guys,

 

I know this is kind of OT, but I've noticed that a lot of people here are way older than me, and therefore know more about vintage tech.

 

This item is sitting around in my house for quite some time, but i have no idea what exactly it is. See attached images. I'm guessing it has something to do with memory. The small dip-looking parts around the device are diodes that look upright and are all connected to a common source. No markings about part number or manufacturer. The structure under the plexi-glass looks like something woven out of wire or a grid or something. It also looks like wires are going into a black material.

 

 

Any idea what it is, how old it is, or in what it was used?

 

Thanks!

 

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