Old core memory system.

[Jon Elson]

On 05/05/2018 11:50 AM, Jules Richardson via cctalk wrote:
> On 05/05/2018 04:57 AM, Mattis Lind via cctalk wrote:
>> It could be flight control related since it is aviation 
>> museum that
>> currently have it.
>
> Hmm, 'stack heater' caught my eye... I'm not particularly 
> familiar with core setups, but I didn't think that was a 
> common thing, suggesting the possibility of a cold 
> environment - immediate thought on the back of that was 
> something on a plane.
Lots of early core memory systems had heated core stacks.  
It was a lot simpler to heat the stack to a known 
temperature than to cool it.  Eventually, they figured out 
that you could put a thermistor in the stack and adjust the 
half-select currents to follow the temperature characteristic.

But, I think IBM 1620, 709x and 360/30, 360/40, etc had 
heated stacks.  I think the 360/50 had a heated local store, 
but not the main store.

The picture looked just a little big/heavy for flight gear, 
but maybe something like the E3 might have gear like that in 
the radar data processor.

Jon