Were the CRT calculators Busicom? One of those was the first thing I ever programmed... Punch cards with an instruction rate of ten per second! I seem to recall it had a magnetostrictive coil memory, an acoustic delay line using wire that behaves like piezo electric stuff does but with magnetism instead.
Cheers, Robin. On 18 Apr 2014, at 13:28, John Rehwinkel <jreh...@mac.com> wrote: >> I do recall, however, that one of the Anita nixie calculators had a magnetic >> memory - a torsion delay line. It was kind of like a clock spring made out >> of stiff wire. An actuator would twist it at one end and the torsion wave >> would go round all the coils and appear at the other end some milliseconds >> later, where it was sensed and fed back to the beginning. So you could store >> data in it, like a very fast tape loop. > > I had a couple of calculators that used that kind of memory. One was a > Singer/Frieden, I forget the make of the other one. They also used CRTs for > display, with some clever logic to vector-trace seven segment digits onto the > screen. They both showed a 3-level stack. Nifty devices, until my sister > threw them out. > > I also had a nixie calculator. It was made back in the days when calculators > were really expensive, so it had one "math box", and four terminals. It > could only make one calculation at a time, but since calculators spend most > of their time waiting, this was apparently not much of a problem. It had a > bunch of digits, Each terminal had 13 CD66 nixies for the display and a neon > bulb for the - sign. It had old-style diode "ROM", with boards covered with > arrays of diodes in various patterns. It died when a power supply capacitor > failed, making all the nixie displays strobe with an interesting rolling > effect as the power line frequency beat with the multiplex frequency. I was > young and poor, and stripped the poor thing for parts. I still have one of > the display boards, minus one of its CD66 nixies. > > - John > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "neonixie-l" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/70FEAB4F-FE8B-48D7-B4FE-F5A746A8564E%40mac.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/AD65A11F-6D55-422F-B279-5C27625A563D%40cqr-ltd.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.