Bubble memory devices

[Allison]

>
>Subject: Re: Bubble memory devices
>   From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell)
>   Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:52:51 +0000 (GMT)
>     To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
>
>> Anyway, on page 46 I stumbled across an interesting article (called "A 
>> Slow Road To Bubble Memories") about bubble memory. The main bubble 
>> memory manufacturers of the time were Intel Corp., Texas Instruments 
>> and Rockwell Int. The article also mentions that Rockwell had a bubble 
>> system, a 256K bit board, available for $1,800. Meanwhile Intel had a 
>> bubble system in kit form - 7110-1 Magnetic Memory board came with all 
>> control and support circuitry - and sold for $2,000. 
>> 
>> What happened to bubble memory? Did it die out due to the costs, or 
>> did people prefer to use cassettes, disks etc. instead? 
>
>I think it pretty much died out due to cost and limited capacity. IIRC, 
>that Intel chipset was 1Mbit, or 128K bytes. And it was hardly cheap. 
>Bubble memory did get used in some portables, for example, since with no 
>moving parts it's pretty rugged.

So the claimed.  It was small, 128kb and largest was 512kb.  It wasn't 
energy frugal the 128k board was something like 12W! It had a fussy 
startup and shutdown. and a 3.5" floppy at that time was new, expensive
but bigger(360k) and lower power. Never really made prime time.

I have two of them in a system that work well but speed is lower than 
5.25 40track SD floppy and power is the same.


Allison