29 Sep
2021
29 Sep
'21
6:31 a.m.
On Sep 28, 2021, at 8:32 PM, ben <bfranchuk at
jetnet.ab.ca> wrote:
On 2021-09-28 2:24 p.m., Paul Koning wrote:
Was that
a drum machime?
Not a drum machine. Core memory, all solid state -- one of the first, and as far as I
know the first commercial product with interrupts standard. Electrologica X1, from 1958.
Also its successor the X8, around 1964. The X8 had a drum as a peripheral device, used in
the THE operating system for paging virtual memory (512 k words).
paul
...
More I play with my designs, I come to the conclusion that
32 bits is not ample for a general purpose computer.
I think Von Neumann would
agree; he picked 40 bits as I recall. There are all sorts of interesting word lengths out
there; the strangest I've worked with is 27 bits one's complement.