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Tuesday, 26 May 2009

The Thinking Machine

Computers: Circa 1950.

My phone's earpiece is more complicated.
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5 comments:

  1. jayessellWednesday, 27 May 2009 at 17:27:00 GMT-7

    It was an interesting article.

    1950 something-or-other.
    Years after the invention of the transistor.
    No mention of of them.

    Rotating magnetic media used as RAM!
    (More specifically, Sequential Access Memory.)
    (One rotation of the drum = one clock cycle?)

    ReplyDelete
  2. SergejWednesday, 27 May 2009 at 17:56:00 GMT-7

    Nope, jayessell, magnetic drum memory. All-electronic memory was hideously expensive, so large-scale storage, say 1K's worth, had to live elsewhere. Think of a modern hard disk, only with one read-write head per track. In effect, RAM, with very long latency. I've read that a skillful programmer could time things so that the drum would come around with the next data just as the processor was finishing the current batch. Compilers do similar things now, but behind the scenes as far as the programmer's concerned.

    As for transistor, 1948 for the first delicate prototypes. Look up TX-1 for the first transistorized proof-of-concept computer. I think TX-1 had shorter MTBF than the then-current tube machines, but the folks at MIT who built it understood that transistors would be the way of the future, and wanted to try out a few circuits.

    Understand, I wasn't around back then. Just curious about this stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  3. jayessellThursday, 28 May 2009 at 08:20:00 GMT-7

    Sergei...

    So, when you say "nope", what you mean is "you are essentially correct"?


    *******

    Year ago I visited the Boston Computer Mueseum.
    Let's see Ben Stiller go there!

    ReplyDelete
  4. jayessellThursday, 28 May 2009 at 08:25:00 GMT-7

    Make that "yearS".

    Also...

    See my Apple // on YouTube.


    http://www.youtube.com/jsl151850b

    ReplyDelete
  5. SergejThursday, 28 May 2009 at 17:55:00 GMT-7

    Nope!

    (When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean!)

    ReplyDelete

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