Historical question, what went wrong with bubble memory?
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From: kenney on 19 Oct 2006 22:03 In article <4537877d$0$1351$834e42db(a)reader.greatnowhere.com>, eric_pattison(a)sympaticoREMOVE.ca (Eric P.) wrote: > Ok, then go straight to the horses mouth. Thank you. Ken Young
From: Peter Flass on 19 Oct 2006 22:43 Christopher C. Stacy wrote: > "Derek Simmons" <dereks314(a)gmail.com> writes: > >>kenney(a)cix.compulink.co.uk wrote: >> >>>I can remember several years when magnetic bubble memory was going >>>to be the next big thing, replacing most other forms of storage. >>>It then seemed to disappear without trace. Has development stopped? >> > >>If I remember right it was very slow, very expensive, not completely >>reliable and I think IBM held most if not all the patents. >>Being slow might have been related to reliably reading >>and writing to the device. > > > It was used for secondary storage on a version of the TI Silent 700. > I think the FTD (Florist) network was based on these. This rings a bell. You have a darn good memory.
From: Larry__Weiss on 19 Oct 2006 23:38 Peter Flass wrote: > Christopher C. Stacy wrote: >> "Derek Simmons" <dereks314(a)gmail.com> writes: >>> kenney(a)cix.compulink.co.uk wrote: >>> >>>> I can remember several years when magnetic bubble memory was going >>>> to be the next big thing, replacing most other forms of storage. >>>> It then seemed to disappear without trace. Has development stopped? >> >>> If I remember right it was very slow, very expensive, not completely >>> reliable and I think IBM held most if not all the patents. Being slow >>> might have been related to reliably reading and writing to the device. >> >> >> It was used for secondary storage on a version of the TI Silent 700. >> I think the FTD (Florist) network was based on these. > > This rings a bell. You have a darn good memory. > A little web surfing reveals that the bubble memory version was the model 765. I don't think I ever used that model, but I sure remember using up a lot of thermal paper on the older Silent 700! - Larry
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Torben_=C6gidius_Mogensen?= on 20 Oct 2006 03:29 cstacy(a)news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) writes: > "Derek Simmons" <dereks314(a)gmail.com> writes: >> If I remember right it was very slow, very expensive, not completely >> reliable and I think IBM held most if not all the patents. >> Being slow might have been related to reliably reading >> and writing to the device. > > It was used for secondary storage on a version of the TI Silent 700. > I think the FTD (Florist) network was based on these. Wasn't bubble memory used on the onboard computer in the space shuttle? Torben
From: Jan Vorbrüggen on 20 Oct 2006 04:31
> Wasn't bubble memory used on the onboard computer in the space > shuttle? Nope. The original design used core. When the processors were upgraded, the memory was upgraded to semiconductor memory (and much larger capacity) as well. As core is inherently radiation-tolerant and transistors are not, the new memory design has ECC and runs a scrubber task in the background. This introduces an operational change: With core, some of the GPCs were "freeze-dried" on orbit, i.e., loaded with software (e.g., for an emergency descent) and turned off. The new design needs to keep them running, with only the scrubber task active. Jan |