Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine

On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:21:23 -0700, Brent Hilpert wrote: Many years ago, when removing magnetic core from process control systems I was required to erase well more like scramble the magnetic core before it could leave the plant. So there was no chance process variables would leave the plant. I would take off the top cover and pass a magnet over the core array and told them to put it back into the system, if they did not believe me, but I had no idea what state the production line would come back up in, if at all. Never had anyone put one back in and test it. One of the sales points of using magnetic core memory on early process control systems even as late as the early 8080 days, was core's ability to retain state on loss of power. One of the leading process control systems of the day did not boot as we know it today on power up It just woke back up, the program was always stored in 16k of magnetic core. The floppy drive was an FE tool for IMPL of core on cold boot. Power on was a true warm boot because the current program was still in memory in a running state. It just needed to be restarted or continued depending on the first interupts it gets back from it's sensors. Not to defend the person who wrote #10 above, but is not instant on, fast recover to operation, computing devices based on rewriteable static memory, the very definition of modern computing even if they only had a clock speed of 476khz. These words being typed by someone who just flashed an ATT/Cingiular 8525 2gigs of storage and 3G connectivity. The Other Bob Still a few Bobs short of a choir :)