D'Arcy J.M. Cain wrote: > On Tue, 28 Oct 2008 10:06:31 -0400 > Steve Holden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Bizarre though it may sound in this age of integrated circuits there >> really was a storage device that used a cathode ray tube to store (IIRC) >> a kilobit of information. It detected, by the use of a capacitance plate > > A kilobit? One tube would carry one bit. Imagine the size of today's > computers if we were still using them. In those days you were lucky to > get 4 Kbytes of core memory. > > In those days they would have techs walking back and forth along > pathways inside the memory banks with shopping carts full of tubes > replacing them as they burned out. Programs had to be prepared to deal > with the fact that bits could go dead at any time and functions would > run multiple times and hold an election to determine the correct answer. > Sorry, you are thinking of bistable multivibrators. I was talking about the Wiliams tube store:
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/SEAC-Williams-tube-desc.html which I now see stored a half-kilobit in its SEAC implementation. They built them to be cheaper and more compact than the single-tube bit store (the single tube actually held two triodes in it), which would be used for accumulators and the like - the fast stuff. I don't ever remember programming to cope with equipment failure, however. Did you make that bit up? regards Steve -- Steve Holden +1 571 484 6266 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC http://www.holdenweb.com/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list