Hello, Peter. On Sun, Jun 16, 2024 at 23:52:15 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote: > On Sunday, 16 June 2024 20:39:52 BST Wol wrote:
> > ... Back in the ancient days, you had a switch panel you toggled to put in > > the boot code. > I remember that. It was 1974. 24 key switches and lots of buttons. You set an > address on the key switches and hit SET, then ditto its contents and STORE. > All set and ready, GO. That was a Ferranti Argus 500, like what was in the > latest submarines, but these were for AGR power stations. 24-bit words, 16MB > of 2 microsecond core store, 2MB disks, ASTRAL assembler language. Full > closed-loop reactor control. > They don't make them like that any more. > PS. Our gas-cooled reactors were intrinsically stable: rising temperature > caused reduction of power, without any intervention. On the other hand, all > water-cooled reactors are inherently unstable: rising temperature causes an > increase of power. They have to be controlled by brute force. > PPS. Guess which I prefer. Yes. There have been several serious accidents involving water cooled reactors in the last few decades. None involving AGRs. At least, none that have come to public attention. Back in the late '70s, whilst still a student, I worked for a year at the UKAEA Safety and Reliability Directorate in Culcheth (near Risley). The topic which consumed most of my time was the modelling of the aftermath of sodium fires in Fast Breeder Reactors. This was done via a differential equation package (whose name I forget) written in Fortran, controlled via a script which generated the input for it. All on ICL 2900 series mainframes. I seem to remember our 2980 had 8 MB of RAM, and was shared between 30 - 40 simultaneous users. The response time wasn't always what one might have desired, and neither was the robustness of the operating system. Sadly, the FBR never made it into commercial deployment. > -- > Regards, > Peter. -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
