Every flight simulator I worked on in the late '60s to early '70s had these.
Just
before the advent of the mini-computer Link used to build their own computers,
24-bit, 20+cabinet beasties and used drums as main storage. Ours were not very
reliable, requiring resurfacing every couple of years. Several companies came
out with solid-stae replacements and most operators quickly jumped at these.
We still have one of these dinosaurs (minus the drum) but its going out the door
in two months. I won't miss it .... oops...guess thats blasphemous on this
list...
Will Jennings wrote:
> Hi,
> I think I heard somewhere that magnetic drums are somewhat like core memory,
> i.e. they retain their contents when shut off... I believe I read this in
> the IBM 704 manual, so I'm not entirely certain that facts about those drums
> (8192 36-bit words!) can really be applied to the drums I'm going to be
> getting, which are from Vermont Research and are approximately 256K or so..
> Also, does anyone know what other computer companies used drums from Vermont
> Research? They're for my Interdata 7/32, but I know at least Varian used
> Vermont Research drums... any others?
>
> Will J
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Received on Tue Apr 18 2000 - 16:42:16 BST