Please identify this circuit board

[Paul Koning]

> On Feb 1, 2017, at 11:57 AM, Rick Bensene <rickb at bensene.com> wrote:
> 
> Mr. Havermout wrote:
> 
>> Can someone identify this circuit board? It's some sort of magnetic core
>> memory. I've had this for ages and I've always wondered what it is and
>> where it comes from.
>> 
>> http://lookpic.com/O/i2/366/iAFq4mLF.jpeg
>> 
> 
> Whatever this was, it appears that it has been scavenged for parts over time.  Many components appear to be missing.
> 
> It seems  to me from looking at the board carefully  that it could be a small wire-rope ROM, or, perhaps the cores (one module has its cover removed exposing the large ferrite rings) serve as pulse transformers for magnetic core that resides on another circuit board.
> 
> If it is a small wire-rope read-only memory, it appears that it could be a 16x16 ROM, perhaps hard wired for some kind of small bootstrap loader or the like.
> It looks like there are 16 wire drivers (two of the driver transistors are missing), and 16 sense amplifiers.

If it's a core-rope ROM, which seems plausible, then it would be 256 x 16.  Core rope uses 2 select ("inhibit") lines/drivers per address bit.  So 16 drivers means 8 address bits, i.e., 2^8 words.

	paul