Historic Internal Storage Media - Technikum29

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Historic internal storage media

In the following some types of memory are described which are found in the computers on display at thetechnikum29. These devices may be classified as either RAM (random access memory) or ROM (read onlymemory). Due to their respective size these are very demonstrative examples.The problem of storing information is of central importance for digital computers and was a difficult area during theearly days of computing. In these times building a fast processor was considerably more easy than building anequally fast and large memory system for this processor. This led to some rather arcane solutions which arecompletely extinct today.

Nowadays as well as 50 years ago, these characteristical attributes are important:

cycle time

packing density

costs / bit

(thermal) power loss

Storages are classified geometrically:one-dimensional alignment (e.g. the delay line memory)

two-dimensional alignment (e.g. drom storage, disk storage)

three-dimensional alignment (e.g. core memory, the number of layers is the word length)

These physical principles has been used: electrostatic charge (storage tube), propagation of acoustic waves (delayline memories), ferromagnetism (core memory, plated wire memory, drum/disk memory), holography (opticalmemories). The most important and most spread memories are the ferromagnetic memories.

Delay line memory from the BULL GAMMA 3 tube calculator

Delay line memory

One of these solutions is the so called delay line memory. It consists of several chained LC-oscillators that are setup as low-pass filters. In this circuit the pulses are carried slower compared to ohmic conductors. Due to the highdamping the pulses must be amplified again. Therefore the memory is equipped with 12 tube amplifiers. Afteramplification at the end of the LC chain, the information is read in at the beginning of the chain again. In this way itruns permanentely throught the delay line memory.

The pictures show a memory unit which is capable of storing a decimal integer with only 12 digits. Obviouslystorage was very expensive in the early times of computing.

Magnetostrictive memory

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1 kB magnetostrictive delay line memory

Another kind of "delay line" memory is the so called magnetostrictive memory. This technique is based on the ideaof the propagation of ultrasonic waves through a thin wire. The information to be stored is fed into a long wire bythe effect of magnetostricion (the wire contracts when exposed to a strong magnetic field this in turn yields anacoustic wave traveling across the wire). A bit pattern created by this effect travels along the wire to its end wherethe information is picked up by a piezo electric element. The output of this pickup will be amplified and fed backinto the beginning of the wire loop.

This basically yields a sequential storage circuit - an impulse pattern will run in an endless loop through the wire.To insert information into the loop some (simple) additional circuitry is necessary. To delete bits, the feedback loopwill be opened while setting bits requires an OR gate at the input of the wire loop.

This type of memory is volatile and has a rather long access time on the other hand, its capacity depends mainlyon the length of the wire and the basic clock of the surrounding circuitry so it may easily expanded. In addition tothis it is relatively inexpensive and rugged making it suitable for applications like desktop calculators and the like.

Core memory

Triumph core memory


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The company "Triumph" created a very demonstrative core memory about 1961). Thecircuit card, measuring 16 cm by 20 cm, can store 144 bit which equals 12 machine wordsof 12 bits each (which was a common word length in this time). Thus a single bit occupies anarea of about 2.2 square centimeters.

The Triump core memory was still threaded manually, in contrast to the memory shownbelow.

Another core memory made in 1969 is shown here. It is used in the high

speed printer (/en/devices/univac9400/highspeed-printer.php) of theUNIVAC mainframe (univac9400.php) and stores a single line of text tobe printed (132 characters). The individual cores can still be seen by thenaked eye.

Storage layer with a capacity of 16.000 bit

During the years the capacity of core memory devices was increased more and more while the dimensions were
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shrinked accordingly. This picture shows a core memory plane made in the time frame 1975 - 1978. The areashown equals that of the 144 bit memory by Triumph shown earlier. Now there are more than 16000 cores on thesame area. The individual cores can only be seen with the aid of a magnifying glass. The whole core memory blockcontains 16 planes like this containing more than 256000 single cores (this is equivalent to 32 kB of data)occupying a volume of about 2.5 cubic decimeters. This device marks the end of the era of core memory.

The smaller the individual cores the faster the access time this device features an access time of only 200 ns.One drawback of core memory is that reading the information stored in a row of cores destroys the information. Soevery read access has to be followed by a write access to retain the information (reading from a core memorytakes more time than writing to the memory which is a rather unique "feature" of this technology).

A major advantage of core memory is its non-volatility. The information stored in a core memory will be retainedeven when power is lost. It is possible to turn on a machine switched off in 1975 and continue operation at thevery same step where it ended in 1975. Even today main memory is sometimes called "core" which is areminiscence of the early days of computing when memory was in fact core memory. A memory dump as a resultof a program crash is still called "core dump" in the UNIX operating systems family, for example.

Threaded ROM

(/en/devices/threaded-rom.php)

Nixdorf threaded ROM

All of the memory devices shown before were capable of read and write operations. Sometimes a read onlymemory (ROM for short) is needed. The picture shows such a ROM made in the mid 1960s which is closely related

to a core memory.The device shown is from a NIXDORF-WANDERER Logatronic system (made in 1966 approximately) which is apredecessor of the well known NIXDORF 820 system (see below). This ROM can store 2048 words of 18 bits each.The implementation is a true masterpiece of its time.

You can get further explanations and a more detailed version (/en/devices/threaded-rom.php) by clicking on thepicture.

Magnetic stick memory
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(/en/devices/magnetic-stick-memory.php)

Nixdorf magnetic stick memory

NIXDORF decided to implement a read only memory which could be easily modified by customers and did notrequire a service technician to modify its contents.The whole operating system of the NIXDORF 820 was stored inROMs like this (all in all 3 modules type 177 were necessary for this). Even empty ROMs were manufacturedwhich were sold to customers who liked to modify their 820 system. Each of these modules could hold 4096 wordof 18 bits each. One of these ROMs weighs 2.4 kg.

Clicking on the picture will yield a more detailed version (/en/devices/magnetic-stick-memory.php) of it.

Plated wire storage

(/en/devices/plated-wire-storage.php)

The plated wire storage was intended for replacing the corememory. Our UNIVAC 9300(/en/devices/univac9400/univac_9300.php) is equipped withthis type of memory that was initially announced by UNIVAC forthe new UNIVAC 9000 series as a "technical revolution" in theirmagazine "The punch card" in 1967.

While research and development in the Goddard Space FlightCenter of the US space program, NASA, the americangovernment closed a deal with UNIVAC to develop a storagemedium with a total input power less than 1 Watt, non-destructive readout (that is, no more neccessarity to write theinformations after reading them), high capacity, low cycle timeand functionality in a temperature range from -20 C to +50C(-4F to 122F).In this way the plated wire storage was developed, based on acouple of ingenious ideas. Unfortunately, nowadays it is veryerror-prone.

Clicking on the photography will yield further informations about the design of the plated wire storage (/en/devices/plated-wire-storage.php).

Two channel punched tape

As already described before (section programmable 2nd generation desktop calculators (programmable.php)),the DIEHL Combitron calculator used a time delay memory (like the magnetostrictive memory describedelsewhere). Since this type of memory is volatile, DIEHL needed a non-volatile memory for the overall control ofthe machine. This had been implemented using a two channel punched tape. The first channel serves as a clockchannel while the second channel contains the actual control data.During the startup of the calculator, the contents of this punched tape were copied to the time delay memorywhich then took over control of the machine.
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Historic Internal Storage Media - Technikum29

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