eBay Finds (was: Ebay Posts was...)

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Fri Jan 22 02:43:24 1999

> The two near to hand just say
> SHARP CE-100B Magnetic Bubble Memory.
> The rest are in the garage - probably the same, though I could check more
> closely should there be any real need.

Yes, but I wonder whose actual bubble memory part is inside the cartridge.
Do you have a broken one to sacrifice for the quest for arcane knowledge?
I wonder whether they put the bubble controller inside the cartridge.
Probably not, since there was no sense in duplicating that cost.

The only manufacturers that I heard of were:

        vendor capacity capacity
                    (bits) (bytes)
        ------ -------- --------
        Intel 1M 128K
        Intel 4M 512K rare?
        Rockwell ??? ???
        TI ??? 92K

Although it's certainly possible that other companies might have tried
their hands at it. There was a time when everyone was convinced that
bubble memory was the next big thing.

Bubble memories had a rated capacity based on a maximum number of
defective loops. The Intel parts had a dot-matrix printed label with
a long hexadecimal map of the good loops. I think they might have also
come with a small PROM containing that data.

Intel's 1Mbit bubble memory controller was the 7220. Unfortuantely NEC
made a somewhat popular graphic display controller/processor that also
is a 7220.
Received on Fri Jan 22 1999 - 02:43:24 GMT