The ware for July 2012 is shown below.
I was cleaning up the basement of the home where I grew up, and came across some old childhood memories. I figured some of them might make fun wares to guess. Both items shown are from the same machine.
The ware for July 2012 is shown below.
I was cleaning up the basement of the home where I grew up, and came across some old childhood memories. I figured some of them might make fun wares to guess. Both items shown are from the same machine.
It’s torsion wire delay line storage, like this but a different model
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Torsion_wire_delay_line.jpg
You’re not throwing out the delay line storage cassette, right? If you are… I’d happily pay shipping to take it off your hands. ;-)
That’s one of the logic boards and the delay line memory from an Olivetti Proramma 101.
For what it’s worth, the P101 in question had been used at my high school in years past, and no longer worked. For the asking, I got it to take home and take apart. Back then (1981 or so) this was just an obsolete piece of junk, not yet a rare antique. The few bits that survived to the present day ended up in this collector’s hands: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/calc/index.htm
If you have no home for your bits, he probably knows people with complete P101s who can use the spare parts.
One early FPGA implementation!
I’m with Markus; there sure is a good resemblance to some of the photos shown here: http://www.oldcalculatormuseum.com/c-programma101.html
Old Olivetti computer boards:
The first board is a part of the CPU, the other one is a magnetostrictive memory: it was used as a delay line and its capacity was not more than 1k bit. Nice and clever trick instead of using drums/mercury filled tubes/… which were really expensive!
I forgot to mention: even on the CPU board there were used some nice tricks like the one of using separate modules : you can see more detailed images at the following link:
http://ummr.altervista.org/before_microprocessors.htm
http://www.storiaolivetti.it/slideshow.asp?idPercorso=578
More details regarding magnetostrictive memories:
http://ummr.altervista.org/before_micros_2.htm
http://www.science.uva.nl/museum/p101dl.php
Certainly the Olivetti P101. I also had one in High School; I remember wasting lots of adding-machine tape running lunar lander on it. Ours was also tossed back in 1981 or 1982; I still have most of the CPU boards and the memory somewhere around here. Very interesting construction on the logic board; almost like mini-ICs with standardised modules; one side of the parts connected on the little PCBs and the other on the main board. Two boards were offset and mounted face-to-face with the modules from one fitting the rows between the modules on the other. That, along with a Tek 4014 and an ASR33 dialed into the CUNY IBM360 was our computer collection until the Commodore PET and VIC-20 arrived.
It looks like delay line storage from either an IBM 2848 display controller or an IBM 2703 TP Control unit. The 2848 kept a screen full of data in the delay line which worked out to be pretty troublesome even with it in an oven.
The 2703 used it as character storage buffer between the TP lines and the controller. I never saw one fail in that configuration in spite of no special temperature compensation.
The time frame of use was late 60’s to early 70’s.
This is really interesting piece of tech history. I did not know that memory was built this way. Very interesting and enlightening. Thanks for posting this.
Even earlier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_tube
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