Subject: Re: WOODEN MEN AND IRON D

From: [email-masked] (gordon hlavenka)
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 1993 06:41:17 GMT

> Isn't core memory a "moving part" ?
>
>Lord no!!!
>
>It's quite rugged....

No kidding...  I remember sitting in on a session at a DECUS
symposium.  The session was called "Strange Things To Do With Your
Digital Computer".  One of the things they talked about was a pdp8
that was used to record data from nuclear blast testing.  The computer
was in a trailer directly over ground zero for underground tests.
When the shock wave hit, the whole trailer was thrown several feet in
the air, and most of the PCBs were unseated from the computer and
strewn about the inside of the trailer.  The guys in devo suits would
collect the core boards, which would then be plugged into other
machines and the data read out.

I guess this means that core memory is also rad-hard.

-- 
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Gordon S. Hlavenka           [email-masked]
Proud father of Daniel Scott     born August 9, 1993

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From: [email-masked] (Bob Smart)
Date: Thu, 9 Sep 1993 08:14:29 GMT

> I guess this means that core memory is also rad-hard.

More so than many other RAM technologies more commonly employed in
machinery that won't be exposed to much radiation.  This is why they
still use core in some spacecraft, for instance.  If you shine enough
radiation on a core bank, it will eventually become corrupted, of
course...but it's nowhere near as sensitive to the odd cosmic ray hit
as, say, ordinary semiconductor chips.  Use of core means you don't get
as much memory per unit volume...but you also don't have to carry as
much shielding.

---------

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