I'm surprised they haven't switched to bubble memory. Data density would be vastly improved, with the same resistance to cosmic ray corruption that the cores provide. I used to strip old core planes for the cores, they made good nonlinear transmission lines inductors when strung together on a single wire.
I often see shuttle personnel with laptops, are they somehow hardened or do they just accept the occasional bluescreen as they are not mission critical? K. -----Original Message----- From: Jones Beene [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, May 06, 2005 11:58 AM To: [email protected] Subject: The core of the Hubble problem ----- Original Message ----- From: "Terry Blanton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Wanna bet? Shuttle used core memory (for reliability purposes) > well into the 80s! Even beyond the 80s, NASA is plagued (or blessed) by DRO... The original equipment on Hubble was/is a computer called the DF-224. It is an 8-bit computer with 64K CORE memory. It has proven reliable and works in Space, but obviously it does not have the capability of any teenager's iPOD or cell phone. During the First Servicing Mission in 1993, a 386-based (wow!) coprocessor setup for the DF-224 was installed which provided some redundancy and extra memory. However, the DF-224 is still the main computer.
