19 Dec
2005
19 Dec
'05
2:40 a.m.
And what else do you have for 17 cents a lb ...
17 cents a pound is what I last got for mixed scrap plastic DIPs from the
gold man.
Has anybody made a computer with such a small range of
components?
( I know of the Apollo
guideance computer already)
The original run of Crays (Cray-1, -1M and 1S) were made from a very small
number of types. I think the original was made with just four different
chips in very large numbers: some simple gates, some more simple gates, a
flipflop, and a memory cell.
Pretty dumb idea, but Cray often "had to be different". I think the
original machines could have benefitted by using a wider range of parts
(like MECL III) - certainly the chip count would have gone way down.
William Donzelli
aw288 at Osfn.org