25 Sep
2002
25 Sep
'02
7:54 a.m.
Good God Man!
I think you have part of a Hughes HM-4118 there!
I worked on these in the USAF, if anything remains of the machine, it
should be very easy to identify due to
the fancy packaging of the electronics.
If you see small PCB's with a latticework of metal running under each
flat-pack IC, all under a thick layer of
conformal coating, your probably looking at the remains of an TSQ-91
combat air traffic control system.
Heartbreaking if true...
Are there any large radar consols there? Any electronics packaged in
mil-spec swing-out doors with Hughes Aircraft lables?
The HM-4118 was quite a machine, it had a square-root function is its
machine code, and was something like a 18-bit PDP-8 or HP2100, with a
17-bit physical address space. Kinda large for a mini of its era, but
not quite a main frame either. Butt-ugly and near bullet-proof..
But what a vector display system it had, for real-time radar video
overlays. Super-cool to see in action.
Joe wrote:
I recently found what looked like a solid block of
aluminium recently but on closer inspection it turned out to be a 64k x 18 core memory
made by Quadri Corporation. It's part number is 1-0805-0015-02. It measures 1
1/2" x 6' x 9" and all the case parts are machined out of solid aluminium
and it fits together so well that the joints are barely visible. It's very obviously
military. It looks like it could survive WW III! I did some searching for Quadri and found
that they used to be a manufacturer of high reliability core memory systems used in
military aircraft, helicopters, tanks and other vehicles but they have been bought out by
a company by the name of Agro-Tech and no longer exist. Does anyone know anything about
the Quadri core memories or know anything about Quadri?
Joe