14 Jan
1998
14 Jan
'98
7:29 a.m.
John,
Bubble memory is a solid state memory device that has "channels" of
magnetic bubbles in it. Each bubble can be polarized N or S giving a 0 or
1. The bubbles can be pushed down the "channel" to get to the desired
bubble, exactly like operating a magnetic tape. It's also a serial access
device same as a mag tape, so access speed isn't too good. If I remember
right they do retain memory when the power is off and they will retain
memory for long periods (~ 100 years.)
Joe
At 11:17 AM 1/14/98 -0500, you wrote:
At 09:50 AM 1/14/98 EST, you wrote:
balls
I own a grid laptop; a compass II 1129 to be
exact. I got if from my brother
who claimed it came from some nasa engineer and the computer played some
major
>part in shape shuttle flight/development or whatever. mine works fine, and
>even has some apps in some extra roms. it's not much of a portable machine
>though because it still has to run on ac power. gotta love the bouncing screen saver
though!
Never saw that screensaver on my Compass 1100. Mfg date on it is 1982, no
internal drives, no extra ROMs either. The 1100 used bubble memory. I still
haven't found a good explanation on what bubble memory is. Anyone know? I
do know that when I got it, there were files in there created back in '85
that were still there, and I didn't see any battery inside to speak of, so
I guess this is a feature of bubble memory? I deleted files and created
some new ones and they saved fine. Trippy.
- John Higginbotham
- limbo.netpath.net