30 Apr
2012
30 Apr
'12
5:19 p.m.
On 30 Apr 2012 at 18:17, allison wrote:
The concept of a transistor computer was fairly dead
but 1966-7. As
ICs had started to displace raw transistors most everywhere save for
high power needs like core drivers and analog functions.
CDC was very slow to abandon the "cordwood" modules in its 6000
series machines as well as the Cyber 70 line. I don't think that ICs
came into use in the CPU until the Cyber 170 (mid-1970s). Even the
backplanes used twisted-pair taper-pin connections.
STAR (circa 1979) used ICs, but they were mostly custom jobs--
Fairchild's inability to deliver ICs for the register file almost
sunk the project. The Cyber 203 version used what Neil Lincoln
called his "box of Chiclets" approach--a limited number of ICs that
would fill a box of the chewing gum tablets.
I recall that Honeywell re-engineered one of their second-generation
mainframes to use ECL ICs and wound up, after a lot of development
expene, with a system that ran just as fast as the old one.
--Chuck