Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!gatech!bloom-beacon!think!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!decvax!decwrl!labrea!glacier!christy From: christy@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (Peter Christy) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: An old fashioned memory technology, CRT's, how'd they work? Message-ID: <17131@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> Date: Fri, 17-Jul-87 11:05:38 EDT Article-I.D.: glacier.17131 Posted: Fri Jul 17 11:05:38 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 18-Jul-87 14:54:12 EDT References: <602@madvax.UUCP> <3490004@wdl1.UUCP> Reply-To: christy@glacier.UUCP (Peter Christy) Organization: Stanford University Lines: 17 This will really date me, but... I learned to program in the summer of 1962 while attending an NSF summer math program for high school students at UCLA. We visited the SWAC (SouthWest Automatic Computer) installation there (one of the '50's one-up machines). It used Williams tube memory. I was offered the chance to program it, but warned that at that time it was so frail that if you slammed the doors on the cabinets it lost bits (really). Instead I learned how to program the 7090 on some interesting number theory tests. I have quite a computer history library here, and if anyone really wants specific references on the technology please let me know by Email and I'll give you some book titles. Essentially Williams tubes, and the memory that Atanasof (sp?) used in his '30's "first" digital computers we're remarkably like today's MOS DRAMs. The nice binary cores were just a short term abberation! Peter Christy christy@glacier.edu.com