ExpandaCore 18 core memory

[Göran Axelsson]

Hi again...

My recent adventures with the StorageTek tape unit is on hold since I 
got a whole new computer to play with... (and because the disk on my 
linux with SCSI card had gone bad). A NORD-1 by Norsk Data AS (or Norsk 
Dataelektronikk AS as the company was called in those days). It is a 
computer built from TTL chips, a whopping 2250 of them. I seems to be in 
great shape and I even have drawings of the most of the CPU.

More about it here : http://www.ndwiki.org/wiki/NORD-1_Serial_47 ... 
with pictures. :-)

The NORD-1 was designed in 1967, the first one was sold in 1969 and 
somewhere between 60 and 120 were produced until it was succeeded by the 
NORD-10. A few NORD-1 ended up in Cern.

The power supplies all was within 0,05V from nominal, not bad for a 44 
year old computer. And except from a few broken switches, a shorted 
capacitor (mechanical damage) and a few missing cards it is in "running 
condition". Well, liberally used definition, it sort of runs. I can set 
the address register and inspect the different registers. When put in 
continuous mode the program counter runs through and loops the memory.

My guess so far is that there is a problem with reading and writing to 
the memory. The problem is that I have no documentation over the memory 
module except a drawing of the circuitry used to access it. ND bought 
several different models of core memory for it's early computers and 
just adapted the interface.

So once again I turn to the cctech for help, does anybody have 
instructions about ExpandaCore 18 from by Cambridge Memories INC, 
Newton, Massachusetts (also known as CMI but probably not the CMI on 
bitsavers).
So far the only thing I've found was a newsflash in a computer magazine 
about a sale of memories to another computer maker.

My plan is to have this machine up and running within a year, in time 
for the 50 year anniversary of ND founding. :-)

... and this is a long shot, if anyone has a copy of ND-NEWS (ND-NYTT in 
Norwegian) I would like to have a scan of it. There might be an article 
in it about delivering this machine to the school that I got it from.

Thanks in advance, Göran