Professional Documents
Culture Documents
PHP)
ENGLISH(/EN/COMPUTER/STORAGEMEDIA.PHP)
START (/EN/) NEWS (/EN/NEWS.PHP) PROJECTS (/EN/DEVELOPMENTPROJECTS.PHP#DUMMEVERLINKUNG) WANTED (/EN/WANTED.PHP) CONTACT (/EN/CONTACT.PHP)
Delaylinememory
Oneofthesesolutionsisthesocalleddelaylinememory.ItconsistsofseveralchainedLCoscillatorsthatareset upaslowpassfilters.Inthiscircuitthepulsesarecarriedslowercomparedtoohmicconductors.Duetothehigh damping the pulses must be amplified again. Therefore the memory is equipped with 12 tube amplifiers. After amplificationattheendoftheLCchain,theinformationisreadinatthebeginningofthechainagain.Inthiswayit runspermanentelythroughtthedelaylinememory. The pictures show a memory unit which is capable of storing a decimal integer with only 12 digits. Obviously storagewasveryexpensiveintheearlytimesofcomputing.
Magnetostrictive memory
1kBmagnetostrictivedelaylinememory
Anotherkindof"delayline"memoryisthesocalledmagnetostrictivememory.Thistechniqueisbasedontheidea ofthepropagationofultrasonicwavesthroughathinwire.Theinformationtobestoredisfedintoalongwireby theeffectofmagnetostricion(thewirecontractswhenexposedtoastrongmagneticfieldthisinturnyieldsan acousticwavetravelingacrossthewire).Abitpatterncreatedbythiseffecttravelsalongthewiretoitsendwhere theinformationispickedupbyapiezoelectricelement.Theoutputofthispickupwillbeamplifiedandfedback intothebeginningofthewireloop. Thisbasicallyyieldsasequentialstoragecircuitanimpulsepatternwillruninanendlessloopthroughthewire. Toinsertinformationintotheloopsome(simple)additionalcircuitryisnecessary.Todeletebits,thefeedbackloop willbeopenedwhilesettingbitsrequiresanORgateattheinputofthewireloop. Thistypeofmemoryisvolatileandhasaratherlongaccesstimeontheotherhand,itscapacitydependsmainly onthelengthofthewireandthebasicclockofthesurroundingcircuitrysoitmayeasilyexpanded.Inadditionto thisitisrelativelyinexpensiveandruggedmakingitsuitableforapplicationslikedesktopcalculatorsandthelike.
Core memory
Triumphcorememory
The company "Triumph" created a very demonstrative core memory about 1961). The circuitcard,measuring16cmby20cm,canstore144bitwhichequals12machinewords of12bitseach(whichwasacommonwordlengthinthistime).Thusasinglebitoccupiesan areaofabout2.2squarecentimeters.
The Triump core memory was still threaded manually, in contrast to the memory shown below.
Anothercorememorymadein1969isshownhere.Itisusedinthehigh speed printer (/en/devices/univac9400/highspeedprinter.php) of the UNIVACmainframe(univac9400.php)and stores a single line of text to beprinted(132characters).Theindividualcorescanstillbeseenbythe nakedeye.
Storagelayerwithacapacityof16.000bit
Duringtheyearsthecapacityofcorememorydeviceswasincreasedmoreandmorewhilethedimensionswere
shrinked accordingly. This picture shows a core memory plane made in the time frame 1975 1978. The area shownequalsthatofthe144bitmemorybyTriumphshownearlier.Nowtherearemorethan16000coresonthe samearea.Theindividualcorescanonlybeseenwiththeaidofamagnifyingglass.Thewholecorememoryblock contains 16 planes like this containing more than 256000 single cores (this is equivalent to 32 kB of data) occupyingavolumeofabout2.5cubicdecimeters.Thisdevicemarkstheendoftheeraofcorememory. Thesmallertheindividualcoresthefastertheaccesstimethisdevicefeaturesanaccesstimeofonly200ns. Onedrawbackofcorememoryisthatreadingtheinformationstoredinarowofcoresdestroystheinformation.So every read access has to be followed by a write access to retain the information (reading from a core memory takesmoretimethanwritingtothememorywhichisaratherunique"feature"ofthistechnology). Amajoradvantageofcorememoryisitsnonvolatility.Theinformationstoredinacorememorywillberetained evenwhenpowerislost.Itispossibletoturnonamachineswitchedoffin1975andcontinueoperationatthe very same step where it ended in 1975. Even today main memory is sometimes called "core" which is a reminiscenceoftheearlydaysofcomputingwhenmemorywasinfactcorememory.Amemorydumpasaresult ofaprogramcrashisstillcalled"coredump"intheUNIXoperatingsystemsfamily,forexample.
Threaded ROM
(/en/devices/threadedrom.php) NixdorfthreadedROM
All of the memory devices shown before were capable of read and write operations. Sometimes a read only memory(ROMforshort)isneeded.ThepictureshowssuchaROMmadeinthemid1960swhichiscloselyrelated toacorememory. The device shown is from a NIXDORFWANDERER Logatronic system (made in 1966 approximately) which is a predecessorofthewellknownNIXDORF820system(seebelow).ThisROMcanstore2048wordsof18bitseach. Theimplementationisatruemasterpieceofitstime. Youcangetfurtherexplanationsanda moredetailedversion(/en/devices/threadedrom.php)byclickingonthe picture.
(/en/devices/magneticstickmemory.php) Nixdorfmagneticstickmemory
NIXDORF decided to implement a read only memory which could be easily modified by customers and did not requireaservicetechniciantomodifyitscontents.ThewholeoperatingsystemoftheNIXDORF820wasstoredin ROMslikethis(allinall3modulestype177werenecessaryforthis).EvenemptyROMsweremanufactured whichweresoldtocustomerswholikedtomodifytheir820system.Eachofthesemodulescouldhold4096word of18bitseach.OneoftheseROMsweighs2.4kg. Clickingonthepicturewillyielda moredetailedversion(/en/devices/magneticstickmemory.php)ofit.
COMPUTER HISTORY COMMUNICATION MISCELLANEOUS (/EN/COMPUTER/ELECTRO TECHNOLOGY (/EN/COMMUNICATION/MEASURE MECHANICAL.PHP#COMPUTER_HISTORY) (/EN/COMMUNICATION/BROADCASTING.PHP#DUMME VERLINKUNG) VERLINKUNG) MECHANICALCALCULATORS MEASUREMENTAND
(/EN/COMPUTER/ELECTRO MECHANICAL.PHP)
EXPERIMENTALTECHNOLOGY BROADCASTING (/EN/COMMUNICATION/MEASUREMENT.PH (/EN/COMMUNICATION/BROADCASTING.PHP) PUNCHCARDCOMPUTING PIANOLA SOUNDRECORDINGAND (/EN/COMPUTER/PUNCHCARD.PHP#DUMME (/EN/MISCELLANEOUS.PHP) REPRODUCINGTECHNOLOGY VERLINKUNG) (/EN/COMMUNICATION/SOUND_TECHNOLOGY.PHP) MOVIEPROJECTOR (/EN/MISCELLANEOUS.PHP#KINOMASCHIN COMMERCIALCOMPUTERS TELEVISION (/EN/COMPUTER/COMMERCIAL.PHP) (/EN/COMMUNICATION/TELEVISION.PHP) SCIENTIFICCOMPUTERS TELEGRAPHYANDFAX (/EN/COMPUTER/EARLY ENGINEERING COMPUTERS.PHP) (/EN/COMMUNICATION/FAX.PHP) ELECTRONICALDESK CALCULATORS (/EN/COMPUTER/ELECTRON TUBES.PHP#DUMME VERLINKUNG) ANALOGANDHYBRID COMPUTERS (/EN/COMPUTER/ANALOG.PHP) STORAGEMEDIA (/EN/COMPUTER/STORAGE MEDIA.PHP)
DELAYLINEMEMORY (/EN/COMPUTER/STORAGE MEDIA.PHP#DELAYLINE MEMORY) MAGNETOSTRICTIVEMEMORY (/EN/COMPUTER/STORAGE MEDIA.PHP#RUNTIMEMEMORY) COREMEMORY (/EN/COMPUTER/STORAGE MEDIA.PHP#COREMEMORY) THREADERROM (/EN/COMPUTER/STORAGE MEDIA.PHP#THREADEDROM) MAGNETICSTICKMEMORY (/EN/COMPUTER/STORAGE MEDIA.PHP#MAGNETICSTICK MEMORY) PLATEDWIRESTORAGE (/EN/COMPUTER/STORAGE
PREVIOUSPAGE ANALOGANDHYBRIDCOMPUTERS
NEXTPAGE BROADCASTING