Front panel switches - what did they do?

[Brent Hilpert]

On 2016-May-24, at 11:39 AM, Eric Smith wrote:
> On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 12:25 PM, Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
>>> On May 24, 2016, at 2:07 PM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
>>> ...and the "transformer" ROS used on the 360/40 (and others).
>> You mean "Core rope memory"?
> 
> IBM's TROS and Core Rope Memory use the same principle, but the
> physical construction is significantly different. Core rope memory was
> very labor-intensive to manufacture, while TROS was not.


We were discussing this last year, perhaps I'm being pedantic but I would note that while, as you say, there is commonality of principle in use of induction and the selective weave to represent the data, TROS and core rope (of the sort used in the AGC) also have differences in their principles of operation - they're not just physical variations on each other.