RE: ascii dates

["James D. Wilson" <netsurf@sersol.com>]

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Yep - I still have a memory card w/the ferrite core "donuts" at the
1/16" size - I keep it as a reminder of the first machine I worked on
(Burroughs B5700.)  Nothing like waiting for the tubes in the tape
drives to warm up before you feed the bootstrap cards through the card
reader so it can continue the IPL and see the tape drives...

- -
James D. Wilson

"non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem"
    William of Ockham (1285-1347/49)
 

- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-cypherpunks@toad.com [mailto:owner-cypherpunks@toad.com]On
Behalf Of Jean-Francois Avon
Sent: Monday, February 22, 1999 8:43 AM
To: Cypherpunks
Subject: Re: ascii dates


On Mon, 22 Feb 1999 14:40:44 +0100, some pissed-off Anonymous wrote:

>The first computers used in launch guidance at Cape
>Canaveral had memory bits the size of your fist and
>were hand-programmed: for a 0, pass the wire through
>the doughnut in this direction -- for a 1, pass the
>wire through in that direction. Total memory something
>like 176 bits.

Yeah!  I grabbed such a card in an old PDP-7 that was rotting in the
physics 
dept fifteen years ago.  The machine has been used by a student, maybe
twenty 
years earlier.  It is now on display in a friend's store, as a piece
of history.

I thought that by sending a pulse in one direction or another, you
could write a 
1 or a 0 in the torus.  My unit is composed of two strips of 15 torus
x approx 
125 rows, with hair-thin wire embroidered into the torus.  The ferrite
torus are 
made from a sliced tube approx 1/16" outer dia x 1/32" inner dia, each
slice 
about 1/64" long.

Most customer who visit the store and look at it don't even realize
what it is!

Ciao

jfa



Youth Leader:  "We're teaching them [kids] climbing, canoeing,
archery, shooting...."
    Interviewer: "Shooting, thats a bit irresponsible isn't it?" 
Youth Leader: "I don't see why, they'll be properly supervised all the
time".
    Interviewer: "But aren't you equipping them to become killers"?
Youth Leader: "you're equipped to become a prostitute, but you're not
one are you"?



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