Playing with Soviet Era Ferrite Core Memory Planes

Ғылым және технология

We hook up two Soviet era ferrite core memory planes obtained on eBay. And they still work!
The 4k core plane is likely from a Saratov-2 core stack:
rusue.com/cemetery-of-soviet-...
The 1k plane is likely from an M-4 memory stack, see:
www.mirebs.com/fozu/ru/_mod_ru...
This would have been used in several military computers says Ralph Mirebs, the author of the web site.
Full schematic of the setup I use in this video:
www.curiousmarc.com/computing...
Previous video explaining core memory:
• Core Memory Explained ...
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Contact info: kzread.infoa...

Пікірлер: 449

  • @CuriousMarc
    @CuriousMarc3 жыл бұрын

    It looks like the larger 4k core plane was part of a core stack used in a Saratov 2 (Soviet PDP-8 clone): rusue.com/cemetery-of-soviet-computers/ . If someone can identify the 1k core plane, that would be terrific.

  • @subutayozselanikli

    @subutayozselanikli

    3 жыл бұрын

    Probably Ural 1 (Урал 1). If there is any identifier on the module, it is possible to confirm.

  • @CuriousMarc

    @CuriousMarc

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@subutayozselanikli The 4K array is now identified as likely coming from a Saratov 2. Still don’t have a clue on the 1K. It is not very dense, so maybe you are right!

  • @subutayozselanikli

    @subutayozselanikli

    3 жыл бұрын

    No, 1K module from EVM M-4 (ЭВМ М-4) says mirebs dot com. You may look via translate, you will find Saratov-2 (Саратов-2) and more.

  • @CuriousMarc

    @CuriousMarc

    3 жыл бұрын

    @Subutay Özselanikli That’s almost it! Ralph Mirebs below confirms the 1k is an M-4 memory stack (but not from an EVM computer) and the 4k is Saratov-2. Thanks a lot for the great website link www.mirebs.com/ . My core planes can be found on this page: www.mirebs.com/fozu/ru/_mod_ru.html

  • @cannibalsx1

    @cannibalsx1

    3 жыл бұрын

    this would probably shock you, but, here, in Riga, Latvija, some boilier houses, even the bigger plants work on computers so old, that are equipped with theese memory drives. year 2021...

  • @HorochovPL
    @HorochovPL4 жыл бұрын

    18:30 And from "it works!" we came to "let's see how good is it to overclock"

  • @kasuraga

    @kasuraga

    3 жыл бұрын

    haha omg i just realized that's basically what he did

  • @divanvanzyl7545
    @divanvanzyl75454 жыл бұрын

    In soviet russia, computer remember you

  • @mr.libluckiestinfinitebene2589

    @mr.libluckiestinfinitebene2589

    3 жыл бұрын

    doesn't need a password

  • @alvinxyz7419

    @alvinxyz7419

    3 жыл бұрын

    lmao

  • @sirmeliodas608

    @sirmeliodas608

    3 жыл бұрын

    omg hhahahahah

  • @-thatzupraguy-13

    @-thatzupraguy-13

    Жыл бұрын

    😂😂😂😂

  • @ParkerEdwardsParties

    @ParkerEdwardsParties

    7 ай бұрын

    That’s not funny my grandpa was a Russian computer

  • @Definitely_the_best
    @Definitely_the_best4 жыл бұрын

    7 nanometers ? Pfff , 1 milimeter ! )

  • @CPSPD

    @CPSPD

    3 жыл бұрын

    1 is smaller than 7 so its better B)

  • @artisticyeti22

    @artisticyeti22

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@CPSPD look at the units

  • @tab8k

    @tab8k

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@artisticyeti22 /woosh

  • @VENOgrad

    @VENOgrad

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@artisticyeti22 /woosh

  • @Juissimies84

    @Juissimies84

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@artisticyeti22 /woosh

  • @vincei4252
    @vincei42524 жыл бұрын

    Marc drops LVDC on us at the very end! Looking forward to that!

  • @SeanBZA

    @SeanBZA

    4 жыл бұрын

    Especially if he reads it out, and you are able to continue the program from where it was last stopped all those years ago, the big advantage of core memory being non volatile.

  • @vincei4252

    @vincei4252

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@SeanBZA I'm sure they're already working on peripherals for all the LVDC input/outputs :-) I wouldn't expect anything less!

  • @mikestewart8928

    @mikestewart8928

    4 жыл бұрын

    ​@@SeanBZA Unfortunately the LVDC had up to 8 of these core modules, so whatever it holds (if anything) will only be a fraction of the program. And since we only have a single surviving example of an LVDC flight program (for the Saturn IB) that doesn't even assemble without errors, there is sadly probably not a lot that could be done with its contents.

  • @TheNovum

    @TheNovum

    4 жыл бұрын

    Spoiler 😝😝

  • @jorgeluissantos77
    @jorgeluissantos774 жыл бұрын

    Anyone else here and watched the whole thing and don’t know anything he’s talking about, you sir got my attention and I have no clue why lol

  • @nowayjerk8064

    @nowayjerk8064

    3 жыл бұрын

    i thought i was alone

  • @wmonk5642

    @wmonk5642

    3 жыл бұрын

    Im russian. There is good french subtitles that can be autotranslated to any known lang. So i understand everything he's talkin' btw, i had a peace of such memory when i was a boy in late 80s Nice idea to make some arduino gate to USB from this mem, and test its speed

  • @amei..2261

    @amei..2261

    3 жыл бұрын

    For me, I thought he was going to play with that big ass core with games. lmao

  • @speaklifegardenhomesteadpe8783

    @speaklifegardenhomesteadpe8783

    3 жыл бұрын

    Yes

  • @campbellmorrison8540
    @campbellmorrison85404 жыл бұрын

    Love it! I too have some old core planes but I never thought anybody would actually get them going in a demonstrable form such as yours, wonderful preservation of a near lost technology

  • @kyletech4878

    @kyletech4878

    3 жыл бұрын

    Just in case you haven't come across this series kzread.info/dash/bejne/ZH-Hw8p6n7KylLg.html

  • @radiognome1971
    @radiognome19714 жыл бұрын

    Oh, how I love watching these videos. Some lives ago I spend two years studying electrotechnics at university, before my life went into a totally different direction. Trying to follow the subjects triggers some deep parts in my brain I used to use in those days. I recognize equipment from the lab or from piles in the corridors. I see schematics and diagrams I remember from books. Fascinating to realize there was I time I was supposed to sort of understand this all. Now I find it utterly relaxing and entertaining to simply watch it. Thanks a lot! Hope you will be given ample time to keep on doing this.

  • @duanecjohnson
    @duanecjohnson4 жыл бұрын

    Hi Curious; I have a Univac core plane from a state of the art memory we were testing in the late ‘70s. This was a “2 wire” core memory. We were getting ready for market. This memory banged the X & Y lines with very short but quite high currents. The trick was there was a delay from when the pulses were applied to when the core actually switched. There were separate gated sense amps on each of the X & Y lines that were strobed after the ringing to recover the bit. It was a marvel this actually worked at all. Shortly after, the project was abandoned because Intels solid state memory was cheaper. Though not as reliable as the core memory. Those were the days. redrok

  • @CuriousMarc

    @CuriousMarc

    4 жыл бұрын

    Amazing I didn't know! Thanks for telling the story.

  • @absurdengineering

    @absurdengineering

    3 жыл бұрын

    smakfu The approach to random runtime corruption was: let it crash, and if it crashed too often you used core or doubled banks with parity selection, but the need for that was very limited - semiconductors did get better very quickly. Bit rot was a thing, and still is. But the reliability issue wasn’t all in the read error rates - in fact those were within usable ranges IIRC. The reliability issue was the chips just failing - whether bits dying, or rows/columns failing, or entire chips just catastrophically overheating (the power supply rails were totally unforgiving). All in all it was improving almost by the month when the Intel stuff was new and they were adjusting the process.

  • @speaklifegardenhomesteadpe8783

    @speaklifegardenhomesteadpe8783

    3 жыл бұрын

    Sounds like what dwave is doing

  • @radwizard

    @radwizard

    3 жыл бұрын

    That's really cool!

  • @vgmandstuff1381
    @vgmandstuff13814 жыл бұрын

    Man, the more I watch your videos the more electronics click for me. Thanks a lot for making them! This is fascinating.

  • @kummer45
    @kummer454 жыл бұрын

    This man is teaching circuit theory in greater detail. It's amazing how generous are these explanations. An exceptional class of engineering and circuit theory.

  • @katyair1
    @katyair14 жыл бұрын

    Brilliant, I love figuring out old technology it's kind of like Reinventing the wheel, I don't experiment with vintage computers I usually work with Old Tube radios different technology same thrill, I've been a subscriber for a few years enjoy your channel thank you for your work!

  • @juliussokolowski4293
    @juliussokolowski42934 жыл бұрын

    I find it so entertaining and heart-warming that you have a bench-grinder just next to the electronic test gear. You are a true all around renaissance man sir. My lab is very much the same way (albeit smaller and messier).

  • @CuriousMarc

    @CuriousMarc

    4 жыл бұрын

    Hehe. You never know, you might have an urge to grind a resistor ;-)

  • @juliussokolowski4293

    @juliussokolowski4293

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@CuriousMarc Haha! I suppose there are cases where it might be necessary. The art of electronics never ceases to amaze and supprise me.

  • @dustysparks

    @dustysparks

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@juliussokolowski4293 "Percussive, Abrasive Tuning"

  • @petezzzz

    @petezzzz

    3 жыл бұрын

    Noticed that too. Just because I bought a bench-grinder 2 days ago. lol

  • @OEFarredondo
    @OEFarredondo3 жыл бұрын

    So worth watching till the end. I’m so amazed at the ingenuity of scientist yesterday and today. Wow I’m just in awe of what we are capable of. Thank you and Bless you for your all the time and effort you put into this video. I appreciate everything. The “one more thing” just did me in bro.

  • @RobLion
    @RobLion4 жыл бұрын

    "So we have done like three months of research in five minutes, thanks to our good equipment here." Too true! A worthwhile investment.

  • @leyasep5919
    @leyasep59194 жыл бұрын

    Your last videos about the HP pulse generators now make so much more sense !!! You aced everything with this video :-D

  • @bertholtappels1081
    @bertholtappels10814 жыл бұрын

    Magnificent work. I truly appreciate that you invest the time to share your efforts with the world.

  • @Scuba_Bro
    @Scuba_Bro3 жыл бұрын

    Oh man this was great! Thank you so much for going over the details of how this works.

  • @ScienceANDesign
    @ScienceANDesign4 жыл бұрын

    Excellent video...!! I've been expecting a video like this on core memory for years..! Thank you..!

  • @vincei4252
    @vincei42524 жыл бұрын

    Thanks, Marc. This is excellent content for my core memory experiments.

  • @adrianchallinor7045
    @adrianchallinor70454 жыл бұрын

    You make this so much more understandable than when I was in college. We had a core memory computer but it was only for use by post-grads. Thanks for helping out an old Computing and Electronic Graduate from just after the end of the Apollo era . And now, back to reading the AGC Hardware book....

  • @mushroomsamba82
    @mushroomsamba823 жыл бұрын

    super cool way to display these and it's great that you preserved the functionality

  • @M1DDL3M4N
    @M1DDL3M4N3 жыл бұрын

    "Here's the skookum version" AvE Reference? :D

  • @Derpy1969

    @Derpy1969

    2 жыл бұрын

    Can confirm. Marc also uses “chooch” in other vids.

  • @PixelSchnitzel
    @PixelSchnitzel4 жыл бұрын

    As I was watching in awe at what you've accomplished, you said *exactly* what I was thinking at 21:50. *Fantastic* video (as always)!

  • @MegaShaheen007
    @MegaShaheen0074 жыл бұрын

    Dear Marc, I've been a subscriber of your channel for a really long time and it amazes me how you are able to grasp the working and circuitry of such complex electronics so elegantly. Of course there is the documentation, but still getting so used to the circuitry as if you were part of it's development is truly amazing. I'm an upcoming computer engineer and would really appreciate if you have any advice or suggestions for a book that might help with developing a skill like yours ( if possible ) 😀

  • @CuriousMarc

    @CuriousMarc

    4 жыл бұрын

    The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill would be on top of my list.

  • @infinitymakerspace1435
    @infinitymakerspace14354 жыл бұрын

    This absolutely awesome. Great video again Marc. Warm regards from, Port Elizabeth, South Africa

  • @sergeaudenaert
    @sergeaudenaert4 жыл бұрын

    Brilliant lab setup - shows many principles of work - wish I had those during my engineering studies back in the 80s great scholary engineering video - thank you !

  • @bazoo513
    @bazoo5134 жыл бұрын

    Ah, good old days when gods walked the Earth and Keysight was not even Agilent, but HP! (I still have somewhere in my attic a stack of those thick HP instrumentation catalogs and HP Journals, right from the time they decided to turn their instrumentation control computers into a general-purpose 1000 series minis.) Wonderful demonstration!

  • @AllElectronicsChannel

    @AllElectronicsChannel

    4 жыл бұрын

    Yep! Today equipments are becoming so annoying. I just saw that in this video the agilent scope shows the same annoying bug my has. It always enable the cursors when doing automatic measures !! WHY !?? You can see the cursor jumping around, over the green trace

  • @CuriousMarc

    @CuriousMarc

    4 жыл бұрын

    Agree! That wiggling cursor that you can’t turn off is so annoying! Could use a few more knobs instead of Russian doll menus too. That said I love this scope. It is so responsive and accurate.

  • @AllElectronicsChannel

    @AllElectronicsChannel

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@CuriousMarc Yeah! I love it too. I will record this annoying bug and send the video to agilent. Ops, keysight 🤦‍♀️A friend of mine have the new Touch version and it do not have the bug 🙄

  • @AllElectronicsChannel

    @AllElectronicsChannel

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@CuriousMarc I just uploaded a video showing and I will send to keysight 😂😂

  • @pjrebordao

    @pjrebordao

    4 жыл бұрын

    It seems in the good old days, HP made a tool for every conceivable need. Does keysight / agilent or any other have this breath of tools today?

  • @reasonablebeing5392
    @reasonablebeing53924 жыл бұрын

    I bought one of those core planes on eBay a while ago and it is in one of my display cases in my office. Allegedly mine came from a Soviet clone of a DEC computer. The LVDC drop at the end - great bonus and tease - can't wait!!

  • @fusseldieb

    @fusseldieb

    4 ай бұрын

    I am quite curious to see what it would show if you tried to read every bit. Would require some massive circuirty but would be interesting. They probably erased it in one way or another, but it should be interesting nonetheless...

  • @DouglasFish
    @DouglasFish3 жыл бұрын

    Marc, thank you. I recently discovered you and I've learned so much already.

  • @rallokkcaz
    @rallokkcaz3 жыл бұрын

    "3 months of research in 5 minutes" this is why I love these videos. Thanks so much for these Marc.

  • @jonwally2002
    @jonwally20024 жыл бұрын

    "We have done like three months of research in five minutes" and 50 years of improvement in test and signal generation equipment :P Love seeing how technology worked back then. Keep up the good work.

  • @DIY-valvular
    @DIY-valvular4 жыл бұрын

    It was a wow! episode, ended with a big woow! thanks Marc!

  • @alpagutsencer
    @alpagutsencer4 жыл бұрын

    Plain perfection Marc! Please go full steam ahead.

  • @danielatbasementtech
    @danielatbasementtech4 жыл бұрын

    Simply fascinating... I love your enthusiasm for basic discovery ... thanks.

  • @reggiep75
    @reggiep753 жыл бұрын

    I'd always wondered about old memory from devices from years gone by and seen them as big towers/nests of wires and magnets but this was a lot easier to understand when it was in a single plane. Nice

  • @cnburbridge
    @cnburbridge3 жыл бұрын

    First, that is so beautiful. Secondly, I had always heard that we went directly from using vacuum tubes, right to using silicon chips; and this is a lot bigger I guess than silicon chip-but a LOT smaller than using vacuum tubes! Actually a very cool intermediary thing. Although it's pretty big for 1k, when I was a 17-year-old teenager the first PCs came out-and we were so excited that they were a whopping 64k!!! So, you can imagine stringing 64 of these together, and the box would be fairly large, but not that large. So, I think this is very cool.

  • @jamesberwick2210
    @jamesberwick22104 жыл бұрын

    In Air Force, working C-5A navigation computers, we had core memory in both primary and backup computers. One of the technical representatives and I figured out the code to which memory core failed. We were always handicapped by depot only maintenance, and lack of computer parts. We started fixing computers by making one really screwed up computer with not one working memory module, and fix eight or ten and sending them back to supply. Depot got angry, but gave in as we could fix it just as good as they did

  • @johnvanantwerp2791
    @johnvanantwerp27914 жыл бұрын

    Reminds me of my days in the 70s at the University of Illinois where work was being done with Control Data Corporation on what was called Auxiliary Mass Storage. It was able to store the equivalent of 8MB (not really, CDC machines used 60 bit words with no parity; thank you Seymour Cray) that we were able to fit in about 9 cubic feet. We used to get memory errors in that bank of memory and our fix was to go over and kick the box low on one side -- there were mechanical relays that would get stuck sometimes.

  • @JohnSmith-eo5sp

    @JohnSmith-eo5sp

    4 жыл бұрын

    Don't tell me it was Urbana, Illinois? That is where the vector computer graphics for Star Wars was made. This is before Lucas created ILM

  • @JohnSmith-eo5sp

    @JohnSmith-eo5sp

    4 жыл бұрын

    Relays in your supercomputer? When was this made, when John Glenn orbited the Earth?

  • @johnvanantwerp2791

    @johnvanantwerp2791

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@JohnSmith-eo5sp yup, that's the lab I worked in! Did the attack graphics on the PLATO IV system hosted on a CDC Cyber 73 and CDC 6500.

  • @johnvanantwerp2791

    @johnvanantwerp2791

    4 жыл бұрын

    I should add that the 6500 had another claim to fame. We got it from McDonnell Douglas where it was the computer they used to run the engineering analyses for the Gemini spacecraft. Oh, and they were the predecessors of super computers, not ones themselves.

  • @electrofan7180
    @electrofan71804 жыл бұрын

    I had a lot of that stuff about ~20 years ago. It was parts from old soviet ES EVM (ЕС ЭВМ) industrial mainframes, equivalents of IBM S/370 (really it was not copies but mostly equivalents with fully compatible interfaces and functionaluty designed on soviet guts). Some modules had dozens of these ferrite planes. Back in the day I was young and had no idea that such stuff is valuable and used it only for parts salvage. Later I cheaply sold the remains. The only things left is empty cases which are still used as big flower pots by my mom in the village☻

  • @DobryakDobreyshiy

    @DobryakDobreyshiy

    4 жыл бұрын

    Typical for barbarians on ruines of ancient civilisation.

  • @gersonroj
    @gersonroj3 жыл бұрын

    Great ! Very good explanation !

  • @anooptiwari2011
    @anooptiwari20113 жыл бұрын

    Roots of our computer memories, Read about but seen First time. Amazing!! Thanks.

  • @glenwoofit
    @glenwoofit4 жыл бұрын

    Fascinating as always then you drop the bombshell.... I can't wait....

  • @isettech
    @isettech3 жыл бұрын

    Some of us are old enough to have repaired the driver boards for these and adjusted the X and Y currents to find the Smoo curve. This curve tends to be a well rounded square of X and Y currents where inside, you don't have bit errors, and outside, you start having bit errors. We fought with one memory for a couple of weeks that would not stay working. turned out one of the carbon composition resistors was defective and would change value if wiggled. We upgraded and replaced the resistors with metal film resistors to fix the problem. These are temperature sensitive. For reliability, they are most often kept in an oven to hold the temperature stable. If you watch the old Disney movie The Computer Who Wore Tennis Shoes", this is why temperature was critical to the computer operating. The small sense area is for the Parity. The array is one bit. A stack of 4 makes a 4 bit nibble and a parity bit in the same array, so in the same oven of the same core batch.

  • @moconnell663
    @moconnell6634 жыл бұрын

    I've never seen Silastic applied so precisely and so neatly before :) 22:50

  • @rpavlik1
    @rpavlik14 жыл бұрын

    That is a big stack of fancy equipment to write and read a few bits... Awesome!

  • @spudhut2246
    @spudhut22463 жыл бұрын

    I got some of it....either way, I was hooked. Great video. I love old technology, ill be watching more. Thank you for taking the time to make these videos. True technology of old, compared to todays garbage. An I phone is lucky to be working after a year, this memory plate, as old as it is, was built to last. Amazing.

  • @SmithfieldWheels
    @SmithfieldWheels3 ай бұрын

    Nice. I saw another video where one was tested one and it still worked.

  • @MaxKoschuh
    @MaxKoschuh4 жыл бұрын

    Wonderful! Great video!

  • @abubua8781
    @abubua87814 жыл бұрын

    Thank you for this nice and correct explanation!

  • @geoffbarton5917
    @geoffbarton59174 жыл бұрын

    Nice video. I worked on a couple of commercially available devices, made in America by Sperry Univac, in the early 1970s. One was a terminal, Univac Uniscope 100, which had core memory for its display memory. The memory boards wore manufactured at the facility I worked at in Salt Lake City, Utah. The core was later replaced by integrated circuit shift registers. The other device that CuriousMarc might be interested in was a Univac DCT 1000 printing terminal. A bit of a beast, but it had a couple of interesting features. One: it had character memory to allow buffering. The memory was a glass delay line module made by Corning glass. It had two flipping buffers holding 160 characters each. That was real fun to troubleshoot. The other feature of interest was a built in modem. This was back in the day when you could only get modems from Bell. Univac designed and manufactured their own modems. They got a huge push back from the Bell monopoly for hooking this foreign device to the Bell system who would never admit to the defects on their system even though we had the proof. Just a bit of nostalgia for me and thanks again for sharing and triggering that.

  • @stevew8233

    @stevew8233

    4 жыл бұрын

    Ah, the Uniscope 100. You're probably very familiar with Engineering Procedure #1 to get a non-functioning U100 working: lift the unit an inch or so and drop it. That jiggled the PC board connections enough to restore good connectivity for a few days. Some DCT series devices were used as console printers for several generations of the 1100 series systems.

  • @geoffbarton5917

    @geoffbarton5917

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@stevew8233 U100 had edge connector board that were not gold plated, so the contacts corroded, hence the drop. The 'fixed' the problem by putting fish oil on the contcts. Oops, then the slippery boards came out of the connectors in shipping. Then they designed a clamp to keep the boards in. Thanks for reminding me, I had completely forgotten.

  • @leyasep5919
    @leyasep59194 жыл бұрын

    It looks so easy when you show how you do it !

  • @RetroGadgetMan
    @RetroGadgetMan3 жыл бұрын

    Fantastic display cases!

  • @WalidIssa
    @WalidIssa3 жыл бұрын

    Great video,, can I know what you use for producing animations?

  • @CuriousMarc

    @CuriousMarc

    3 жыл бұрын

    That was done using a combo of Adobe Illustrator and DaVinci Resolve. Took a lot of effort. Resolve is very hard to use and quite buggy, but hey it’s free, and very capable, so it’s hard to complain about it. On the other hand the new Adobe subscription model is not even close to be worth the value for me, I mean by a mile. And they are buggy and overly complicated too. The Apple tools might be the right middle.

  • @graemedavidson499
    @graemedavidson4994 жыл бұрын

    The sense wire maxim... flippin’ eck... so long and thanks for all the memories!

  • @3drakaina
    @3drakaina7 ай бұрын

    Th circuit you used for combining the pulses onto one wire is nearly the same as what you use to add in a stereo aux input to a vacuum tube radios pre-amp tube. Solid circuit.

  • @NivagSwerdna
    @NivagSwerdna4 жыл бұрын

    @6:51 the joy of a pair of repaired HP pulse generators... that was so sweet.

  • @galfawker339
    @galfawker3393 жыл бұрын

    Actually, I had visited a factory and the lady workers were threading this ferrite cores ( at least 40 years ago ). Technologies and time flies.

  • @SusanAmberBruce
    @SusanAmberBruce4 жыл бұрын

    great demo! thanks

  • @kalimist4217
    @kalimist42174 жыл бұрын

    amazin work... thank you marc

  • @graemedavidson499
    @graemedavidson4994 жыл бұрын

    I still have the core memory out of a Wang 720C calculator I was gifted as a teenager (1980s). It had an intermittent fault and full of ICs and parts I could not identify. It had a ferrite transformer ROM too. To this day, I kick myself that I broke up the 720 as I’m sure I could have fixed it now, knowing that the ICs were often standard TTL with Wang part nos instead.

  • @clockhanded
    @clockhanded3 жыл бұрын

    I'm stunned that I understood about 20% of this. I should spend more time learning instead of gaming. It seems so unlikely that we arrived where we have in computing technology from the devices we did. The PCB is so amazing.

  • @StatusFIX
    @StatusFIX2 жыл бұрын

    There's a brief mention about this type of memory in a book i'm reading, called an introduction to microcomputers.

  • @skaneverdies
    @skaneverdies3 жыл бұрын

    As someone who knows nothing about vintage computing, everything you say usually goes well over my head, but I'll always come back for the pure aesthetic, space-age beauty of the technology.

  • @milantrcka121
    @milantrcka1214 жыл бұрын

    Just wondering - would an MR sensor, such as from a disk read head, be able to read the core magnetic flux? Small enough for high spatial resolution. Donor hard drive could even supply the read amp (?!) . Back in the day we played with some super-sensitive MR sensors that could read the mag field of a Nd magnet disc being flipped in someone's pocket some ten feet distant.

  • @succuvamp_anna
    @succuvamp_anna4 жыл бұрын

    In school for my certifications, we had a few boards of core memory as examples. They were like 2x2 Ft, about 3000 cores on it. It's crazy when you remember they were hand wound.

  • @mark-tin
    @mark-tin3 жыл бұрын

    Память на ферритовых сердечниках)) интересно)

  • @72polara
    @72polara4 жыл бұрын

    Looks like some interesting things to come....

  • @AsbestosMuffins
    @AsbestosMuffins4 жыл бұрын

    Next 6 months: "How we fixed an apollo saturn V launch computer up." Except the launch computer was absolutely massive

  • @rkan2

    @rkan2

    4 жыл бұрын

    You only need the memory though hehe

  • @carlclaunch793

    @carlclaunch793

    4 жыл бұрын

    It did take a fair amount of space in the Instrument Unit ring atop the Saturn V. There is the Launch Vehicle Digital Computer (LVDC) computer, multiple core stacks like this one, the Launch Vehicle Data Adapter (LVDA), and the Flight Control Computer (FCC) plus inertial platforms, sublimator cooling systems and telemetry gear.

  • @MrChrisStarr
    @MrChrisStarr4 жыл бұрын

    More Apollo! Can't wait!

  • @simmo1024
    @simmo1024 Жыл бұрын

    Our PLCs where I used to work, were still using core memory right up until the 90s. The memory units were getting rare by that point, and expensive to service!

  • @mxsteven
    @mxsteven3 жыл бұрын

    I love the note! "generate with enough oomph" lols

  • @henryD9363
    @henryD93633 жыл бұрын

    Purpose of the inhibit wire. I found this online somewhere. "Many core memory arrays also have a 4th wire, known as the inhibit wire. Like the sense wire, one inhibit wire runs through all the cores. The purpose of the inhibit wire is to optionally provide current in the opposite direction to the write current, through the core being written. This will cancel out some of the magnetic field, and prevent the core from changing. Why would you want to do that? The answer is that it lets you easily stack multiple planes of core memory, all sharing the same drive wires. Without the inhibit wire, this would cause the corresponding core in each plane to be written. By sending the appropriate current down all the inhibit wires except one, we can ensure the write only affects the desired plane. The inhibit wires is an efficient way to scale up a system by adding multiple memory core planes. The alternative would be to make the matrices bigger and bigger, but eventually current losses and crosstalk make this impractical."

  • @alpcns
    @alpcns4 жыл бұрын

    Lovely! According to certain "experts" on the internet, the Apollo guidance computer couldn't work because core-rope memory wasn't real. Hilarious. And what a beautiful LVDC core... all that yummy stuff!

  • @piewars12345

    @piewars12345

    4 жыл бұрын

    haha! Funny how that works 😂

  • @XMarkxyz

    @XMarkxyz

    4 жыл бұрын

    Mind that a core memory like this one was used as "ram", I don't think ram is the most exact name, but it does rougly the same job: stores data which will change during the mission (like istantaneous velocity or results of calculations); while the core rope stored "non changing" data, like the agc program itself and some constants, it was read only and used a similar physical principle of interaction between magnetic cores and wires but instead of only one you had more than 150 bits stored in each core by passing more wires in it, also because of this it wasn't possible to modify the data stored, it was literally... hard wired.

  • @alpcns

    @alpcns

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@XMarkxyz That is exactly correct: core-rope memory is ROM (read-only, and hard-wired) whilst conventional core memory is RAM, random access memory for read and write operations.

  • @compu85

    @compu85

    4 жыл бұрын

    Really? Of all the possible... objections? core rope? I suppose the film of it being made is fake, the modules in museums are empty, and Marc is actually a government agent installing 5G in our Yourtube feeds?

  • @aserta
    @aserta4 жыл бұрын

    Those display cases you've made look really cool. I think i'll copy the idea for a core i have. Found it thrown out in the street after a local science museum did a spring clean. I keep it on a piece of cardboard, poor thing suffered some abuse. :(

  • @TobyAsE120
    @TobyAsE1204 жыл бұрын

    Could you build a circuit (just transistors and stuff) that restores the bit after reading? I would be interested to see it!

  • @TheFleetz
    @TheFleetz4 жыл бұрын

    Brilliant! 👍

  • @edgeeffect
    @edgeeffect4 жыл бұрын

    Nice plexiglas work.... I often have display cases like this in my mind.... but they come out looking a lot more "punk" than this....

  • @JohnRineyIII
    @JohnRineyIII4 жыл бұрын

    Wow - that LVDC core stack should (should in very large finger quotes) still have its last contents, just like the AGC, right?

  • @MrJohndoakes
    @MrJohndoakes3 жыл бұрын

    They used these in their knockoff of the DEC PDP-8/M, the Saratov-2. Also possibly the BESM-6 supercomputer. Another Soviet computer gadget to look out for are punched card readers, they kept on doing batch processing and other punched card stuff to the end of the USSR because nothing but tubes ever went obsolete in Soviet computing. I have seen Soviet punched cards for sale online dated "1987" - they weren't laminated like the IBM-Honeywell-Burroughs cards, just rough card stock.

  • @marekmosat7176
    @marekmosat71764 жыл бұрын

    Thanks for this

  • @kirknelson156
    @kirknelson1564 жыл бұрын

    for the second one where you have the sense wire for only about 1/4 of the bits is it possible that was a parity bit? so you have 1 1 1 + 1 or 0 to 8 plus parity?

  • @douro20
    @douro203 жыл бұрын

    Occasionally you can still find small containers of ferrite cores, which were made by VEB Mikroelektronik Gera, on Etsy.

  • @eecnnoe346
    @eecnnoe3463 жыл бұрын

    22:28 Thats some big chunk of space waffles you got there o0

  • @blackarrow8683
    @blackarrow86834 жыл бұрын

    16:45 👨🏻‍🏫 Can you explain that circuit in more detail? 😍 How does it exactly work? 🥰 Thanks so much! 💕

  • @rkan2

    @rkan2

    4 жыл бұрын

    I think it was explained somewhere during the AGC restoration? (might not be on a video)

  • @pulesjet
    @pulesjet4 жыл бұрын

    This is the stuff we had as kids back in the 60's! TOP SHELF Science it was.

  • @DikobrazesFRS
    @DikobrazesFRS3 жыл бұрын

    Hello from Saratov!

  • @robbyddurham1624
    @robbyddurham16243 жыл бұрын

    I was excited to actually see a core flip. I'll have to search the internet more.

  • @xtevesousa
    @xtevesousa4 жыл бұрын

    Could you talk about keeping a binded labbook, your strategies, etc? thank you.

  • @mitchwright1558

    @mitchwright1558

    4 жыл бұрын

    Start with ink, never graphite pencil, if you make a mistake one line through the middle, no on page gaps or pages, date each entry ...

  • @damientonkin
    @damientonkin4 жыл бұрын

    I wonder if the smaller plane was intended to have the inhibit lines shorted like that and they just made them separate for manufacturing reasons?

  • @hugeshows
    @hugeshows4 жыл бұрын

    It would be fascinating to dump one of those cores and see if there's any discernible data on them after all these years.

  • @mirskym
    @mirskym4 жыл бұрын

    I think we bought the same 4k bit core memory! I also bought mine from Russia on eBay and looks identical to yours'. But I don't have the equipment you do to test it out. It's just a talking piece alongside my deck of punched cards and other paraphernalia

  • @Myke1576

    @Myke1576

    4 жыл бұрын

    Same here for the 1kb memory! I hope to make a little display that uses a bit of their functionality.

  • @CuriousMarc

    @CuriousMarc

    4 жыл бұрын

    If we all band together we can recreate a full stack :-)

  • @Lossanaght

    @Lossanaght

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@CuriousMarc And dump whatever was stored on it when last used. Wonder if there are any Cyrillic "Hello Worlds" in there, lol.

  • @HappyBeezerStudios
    @HappyBeezerStudios3 жыл бұрын

    Have you done a core dump before working on them, just do see if there is some data on it?

  • @yorgle
    @yorgle4 жыл бұрын

    With core memory, are the magnetic fields strong enough that you can see them using some "magnetic viewing film" sitting right on top of the core array, or would you basically see nothing/no activity at all?

  • @CuriousMarc

    @CuriousMarc

    4 жыл бұрын

    That is an excellent suggestion, I had not thought about it. My bet is that you would see them.

  • @carlclaunch793

    @carlclaunch793

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@CuriousMarc yes as long as the grains in the magnetic viewing film were tiny enough to show the field around the rather small core donut.

  • @Mr._Sandman
    @Mr._Sandman3 жыл бұрын

    You should put some of that magnetic viewing film over the cores to see them flip that way, that'd be awesome.

  • @CuriousMarc

    @CuriousMarc

    3 жыл бұрын

    That would be very cool indeed. I actually tried. Unfortunately the magnetic field is many orders of magnitudes to small for the regular film to work. I tried with much more sensitive oil-based viewers instead, and that did not work good enough either (way too slow), although I saw a hint of something. Then I tried to contact some professional outfits that do magneto-optics films and cameras. That would work, but that's many 10's of thousands of $ worth of equipment and they were not interested in sponsoring a loan.

  • @drocles
    @drocles3 жыл бұрын

    Just curious, I recently picked up a couple of these and one is damaged. I would like to attempt a repair and was wondering where i could find resources such as wire and ferrite cores. I love the videos, i find them fascinating and informative. Thanks for them and I hope to see more!

  • @CuriousMarc

    @CuriousMarc

    3 жыл бұрын

    These are eminently repairable, if you have steady hands and a good bino that is... Cores you can find on eBay, wire is standard transformer enamel wire, from any electronic supplier.

  • @NanoslavicLab
    @NanoslavicLab3 жыл бұрын

    I have several of the same memory modules. I found them in a junkyard as a child :)

  • @michalsabat4720
    @michalsabat47203 жыл бұрын

    Today, you have terabytes of storage in that size! Time flies like heck!

  • @wimkuijpers1342
    @wimkuijpers13424 жыл бұрын

    What a cliffhanger!

  • @Bolt6265
    @Bolt62653 жыл бұрын

    Would be cool to see this hooked up to a simple computer of some kind and used as actual memory for it

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