Hand-wired core for ROM?

[Rod Smallwood]

Not seamstresses but nimble fingered girls in Puerto Rico and the 
Phillipines
Core was in effect ROM. Power the system down switch off and anytime 
later turn it back on and whatever was
in core was still there. I can remember our  Field Service guys 
restarting the final factory diagnositc on new systems.



On 10/04/2015 16:32, geneb wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Apr 2015, Paul Koning wrote:
>
>>
>>> On Apr 10, 2015, at 10:38 AM, geneb <geneb at deltasoft.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Did the PDP14 (or any machine of that era) ever use hand-threaded 
>>> (by the end user) core boards as ROM?
>>
>> Do you mean DEC machine?
>>
> Yes.
>
>> I don’t know any.  Certainly not any PDP-11; those used solid state 
>> ROMs, or in the early boot ROM cards, diode arrays.
>>
> I want to make sure it wasn't in use before I double-down on calling 
> shennanigans on "Joe" in this thread:
> http://hackaday.com/2015/04/08/restoring-a-vintage-pdp-1104-computer/#comments 
>
>
> As far as I know, machines of that era used cores that were so small 
> the DEC hired master seamstresses (myth?) to make them. It's certainly 
> not something that would be done in the field by John Q. Programmer.
>
> If I'm wrong, I'll happily admit it, but it just doesn't sound 
> reasonable.
>
> Thanks!
>
> g.
>