18 Jun
2011
18 Jun
'11
9:39 p.m.
On 6/17/2011 3:43 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
Any idea if that was due to their mechanical construction? I recall a
computer system in the early 60's that was plagued with diodes that
would sometimes open up with the slightest vibration. Then in the mid
60's I worked on an optical character reader with many more diodes but
nary a problem with them. I seem to recall the latter ones being
referred to as having "unitrode" construction, which could be my faulty
memory, or perhaps that was a TI term as we were using their diodes
extensively in the OCR system.
Later,
Charlie C.
In computing
(not talking about audio here) I don't think there was
much debate about valves vs. transistors. Transistors were pretty
quickly embraced for computer hardware when manufacturing and
reliability were sufficient for the application.
However, the last isvery important. Professor Wilkes told me (IIRC) that
the most unreliable components in EDSAC were the germanium diodes.
-tony