I have a Wang Engineering calculator about 1968 with desktop keyboard and Nixie display with electronics in a small suitcase which sat under the desk and a printer which did spark-erosion on aluminized paper. Core plane memory allows a program to be halted at the end of the work day when the system is powered off. Next day when you turn it back on, a lamp illuminates to indicate that it is still running the program ! No instant results when you hit execute back then. Phil B. ----- Original Message ----- From: petehand To: neonixie-l@googlegroups.com Sent: Friday, April 18, 2014 4:52 AM Subject: Re: [neonixie-l] Interesting document on Krypton-doped nixies,,,
I notice in the Burroughs Bulletin N101 Nick posted that the block diagram on page 2 shows a core memory! Reference in the text to the "recirculation loop" leaves no doubt. I'm curious to know if anyone has ever seen a Nixie instrument with a core memory? Presumably they must have existed sometime, somewhere, but I would have thought the cost - together with the "recirculation loop" and write electronics - would be substantially more than a few BCD to decimal decoders, even in the days before TTL. 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. -- 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 email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/5ee496bc-8d99-4da2-b938-c2fba7c76eb1%40googlegroups.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/BLU0-SMTP7172E3888DD3F4CAC26B9BC15D0%40phx.gbl. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
