Memories of Weird Memories, of Computers Past | Hacker News Reader

Memories of Weird Memories, of Computers Past

madned.substack.com

32 pointsgeocrasher5 comments

> The system we were building could theoretically have up to 1GB of memory, but we laughed at this idea at the time, because it would require multiple refrigerator-sized cabinets and millions of dollars to build it, and who needs a gigabyte of memory, anyway?

> Now of course, a USB drive in the back of your desk drawer that is only 1GB gets thrown out for being too small, and a suitable replacement can be found for under $10 at the supermarket checkout stand.

The first few paragraphs made me cringe because the writer conflates volatile memory with non-volatile storage. It's problematic to compare the two types together because for many decades, storage has been an order of magnitude cheaper than memory. The rest of the article isn't that bad.

NewEgg also has a 1GB DDR2 for under $10. It's just not immediately available like a supermarket checkout stand.

The distinctions between volatile and non-volatile memory weren't always so distinct!

"Another interesting property of core was that it is a non-volatile system, unlike most of its predecessors. The magnetic field in each ferrite bead is quite durable, and unless the core system is exposed to a strong magnetic source, the state of the memory should last almost indefinitely, even with no power.

That means that all those old computers in storage somewhere, in museums, in landfills or wherever they may be, likely still contain the last program they ever ran. And If you could find a way to power one on, that code could actually run again.

Spooky."

Not really. I had a core plane in a desk drawer for years. Each time I got it out to show someone, bits of core would shake out onto the floor. See, the little ceramic cores decay over time and fall apart. By now (if I hadn't gotten rid of it) it would have no cores left.

Literally, 'bitrot'.

When the power went out in Cambridge (MA) the computers in tech square would all crash. But when the power returned the old KA-10s would continue. The only semiconductor memory was the machine registers (in DTL, not TTL, logic). So the program running at the time would crash, but unless the machine was in the monitor (kernel in today’s parlance) everything else could continue just fine.

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