New subject: Cap'n Crunch

19 Nov 1998

I have never ordered from the guy, because I smelled a skunk.  The
only info I have came from his own ads and web pages; I have not
actually been "done wrong" by him.  The pictures do look great,
and if everything looked consistent with that, I'd have probably
ordered one or two myself.

But here I'll quote from his web page, which lives
at http://www.netw.com/~drfcline/univac.htm :

] UNIVAC of the 1950s was an awesome high tech machine of then amazing
] ...
] Each stack had eight memory planes. Each memory plane had a fine mesh
] ...
] In the midst of glistening fine copper wires, the little doughnut could
] ...
] 
] The amazing lace and tiny rings are long gone now. But the legacy still
] lives on in the word "stack" and "core memory". 

The ellipses were just some happy talk about how cool cores and Univacs
were.  I agree with him there, wholeheartedly.  But those last two
sentences sounded to me as if there were no cores to be had.  If he
had them for sale, how could be be calling them "long gone"?

Well, okay, we have at least one confirmed order in which cores are
really present, and nobody griping about getting ripped off.  The
only sane conclusion is: you are right, I mis-read it in a big way.
Guess I'm so used to scams that I'm seeing them even when they are
not there.

Thanks for the correction!  On top of setting me straight on something
that I felt bad about, this means maybe I can talk myself into (out of?)
ordering one!  :-)

Apologies to Dr. Cline, and to the list, for my outburst.

	Bill.

On Thu, 19 Nov 1998, Doug Yowza &lt;yowza(a)yowza.com&gt;  wrote:
] On Thu, 19 Nov 1998, Bill Yakowenko wrote:
] 
] > Beware; in the past this guy has offerred "core memory planes" for
] > sale several times, even on this list.  But if you had read the
] > fine print you would have found that there were no cores - just
] > the rectangular PC-board "frame" in which the cores used to reside.
] > I suppose you could call that a plane, but it isn't what most
] > compu-geeks would think when hearing the word in that context.
] 
] Are you sure, Bill?  The pics on his website look like real core planes
] to me:
]         http://www.netw.com/~drfcline/screen8.jpg
]

Also on Thu, 19 Nov 1998, "David C. Jenner" &lt;djenner(a)halcyon.com&gt;  wrote:
] Bill,
] 
] You are 100% mistaken.  You have seriously misread the information.
] 
] His commentary and web page are written in the past tense to
] indicate that "core memory" is not used in today's computers,
] not that the boards do not have the cores in them now.
] 
] He is selling, in addition to the core memory boards, the controller
] cards that ran a stack of the core memory cards.  He is not saying
] that the cards are really controller cards and not core memory cards.
] 
] I got a card a while back and the core memory card is exactly as
] stated and shown.  There are cores.
] 
] My only stupidity was having to pay the $20 or so when I should have
] had a free sample from years ago.
] 
] Dave

ebay: Antique UNICAC computer memory planes