TI Bubble Memory?

From: Scott Stevens <sastevens_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Fri Apr 16 22:54:55 2004

On Fri, 16 Apr 2004 23:21:27 -0400
"Joe R." <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com> wrote:

> Today I found a couple of multibus cards made by TI. One of them is
> marked TM990/210. In addition to a TI TMS9916NL LSIC, it has six large
> yellow "blocks" on it that I THINK may be bubble memories. They're about 1
> 1/4" square and about 7/16" thick and are marked "TIB 0203S, 23May80 -1,
> MSK=627573, 8B, 958-S-40, 24-164-11". They're in flattened out metal
> cylinders with a black epoxy looking material in the center. There are
> seven leads coming out of each end and there is what looks like a small
> plastic transistor clipped to the side of the package. It looks like a
> transistor but only has two leads so I'm guessing that it's probably a
> temperatrure sensor. Does anyone know if these are bubble memories? I've
> had TI bubble memories before but they didn't look anything like this.
> Anyone know what these cards are? the second one is marked TM990/310. It
> has three TI TMS9901s on it along with many SSI ICs.
>

I didn't know TI made bubble memory. Intel promoted it heavily for awhile. I have an Intel 'Bubble Memory Development Kit' which is a boxed kit with an ISA slot board for a PC with two modules on it that have a total of 4 megabits of bubble memory. Complete in the box with all docs. About a decade ago I plugged it into a 286 machine and verified that it does work with the Intel drivers supplied. You get a 512K bubble memory drive once the drivers are loaded. It was apparently intended as a 'evaluation kit' for developers to play around with to familiarize themselves with bubble memory.

I got it at a surplus store, where it had been mis-marked as an '4 meg memory expansion board' back in the era after Windows 95 had come out when everybody was scrambling to cram more memory into their PC to try to make Windows 95 actually work. They tried to get 80 bucks for it for quite awhile in the glass case in front, then one day I found it back in the 'junk' bin and snapped it up for $5.


> Joe
Received on Fri Apr 16 2004 - 22:54:55 BST