On Wednesday 02 November 2005 10:36 pm, Robert Cunningham wrote:
Don't knock 8" floppies, I still have a working electron microscope here that uses them for it's X-ray spectrometer library via a cpm computer I worked on a Point-of-Sale system that used core memory as a storage device. Since core is non-volatile, when the system looses power, all the data is preserved. We had a power fail board that gave us enough time to save all those registers (accumulator(12 bits), link(1 bit), PC(12 bits)). The printer was a drum printer where we issued to codes to strike the hammers. The modem was simple, sit in a loop for 1200 bps, then either read or write a bit.
When a system in a restaurant needed a software update, we would schedule
that to occur after that store downloaded its daily data. The system had 4K
12-bit words (except in Ct where we had 8 K because we had to accumulate
both meals and sales tax).
If the system crashed and needed to have its code reloaded, a serviceman was
called, and he had a case with a paper tape board and paper tape reader.
Note that An Wang (founder of Wang labs) co-invented core memories.
--
Jerry Feldman