For Sale: Soviet Military Ferrite Core Memory Stack Cube and Manual • Hacker News Board

Re: For Sale: Soviet Military Ferrite Core Memory Stack Cube and Manual

#21

Post by ajross » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 4:04 PM UTC

colanderman wrote: post #5

That's 4K words ; each word seems to be 18 bits (assuming that's what "width" means). That's 9 kB by today's standards.

Typical usage was to pack 3 6-bit characters into a word on these machines if you weren't simply using it as integer data. So it's "really" something closer to 12k of text or (assuming all the computations fit in the different word sizes) 16k of integer/pointer data.

Re: For Sale: Soviet Military Ferrite Core Memory Stack Cube and Manual

#22

Post by arethuza » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 4:06 PM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #14

Is it just me or is that "art". Nice design. Weren't the Russians making vacuum tubes for decades after the US stopped and "perfected" them?

The Mig-25 was fairly famous for using vacuum tubes - initially this was seen as rather funny in the West then people realised that they actually had some distinct advantages, including alleged resiliance to the EMP from nuclear explosions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-25

Re: For Sale: Soviet Military Ferrite Core Memory Stack Cube and Manual

#23

Post by javajosh » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 4:09 PM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #14

Is it just me or is that "art". Nice design. Weren't the Russians making vacuum tubes for decades after the US stopped and "perfected" them?

It is clearly a beautiful design - and the workmanship is incredible as well. I can't imagine how long it must have taken to build just one of those things. It reminds me of the workings of a fine mechanical watch.

That said, I think it's grossly overpriced. Probably worth about $800-$1k (based on it's similarity to classic mechanical watches).

Re: For Sale: Soviet Military Ferrite Core Memory Stack Cube and Manual

#24

Post by JonnieCache » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 4:09 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #18

JonnieCache wrote: post #3

Nothing next to this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/1967-vintage-London-MELLOTRON-Progra... My birthday is soon. Email in profile.

Wow, what a find. A tape based sampler. Amazing. That would be so much fun to restore to working condition.

It's an offshoot of the Mellotron[1] which was basically the original sampler. The mellotron was/is a keyboard where pressing each key spooled out and played back an individual tape strip of a real string section, cello, flute etc. It's the string sound that's really famous and recognisable. The mechanisms make a VHS look simple, see the wiki article for diagrams.

The linked machine is a read-write version of the mellotron, created especially for the BBC to do sound effects for radio programmes. One of the many one-of-a-kind cutting edge devices commissioned by the BBC in the glory days.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mellotron

Re: For Sale: Soviet Military Ferrite Core Memory Stack Cube and Manual

#25

Post by __alexs » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 4:10 PM UTC

feritkan wrote: post #6

So this thing runs in space? They went to space with this?

I suspect it is more likely to be from terrestrial military hardware or a something like an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ES_EVM

Re: For Sale: Soviet Military Ferrite Core Memory Stack Cube and Manual

#26

Post by raphar » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 4:11 PM UTC

beautiful!

Re: For Sale: Soviet Military Ferrite Core Memory Stack Cube and Manual

#27

Post by TheAnimus » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 4:17 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #10

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #4

That's crazy, you can see it's handmade. I wonder if it still works?

Might be fun to hook it up to an Arduino and see if you could read/write. I imagine it needs its own power supply.

Iron core memory, so it would probably still read/write just fine, if not, fixing it shouldn't be too hard if you've got the hands for it.

Re: For Sale: Soviet Military Ferrite Core Memory Stack Cube and Manual

#28

Post by noobs » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 4:17 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #9

Nekorosu wrote: post #8

Absolutely overpriced.

Overpriced in terms of today's RAM prices (yes!), or overpriced for a Soviet 4K RAM module of its type? I've never seen one before so I have no idea.

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic-core_memory states that: "in 1980, the price of a 16-kW (kiloword, equivalent to 32kB) core memory board that fitted into a DEC Q-bus computer was around US $3,000."

This one is a 4kW or 9kB from 1983, I'll let you do the math!

Re: For Sale: Soviet Military Ferrite Core Memory Stack Cube and Manual

#29

Post by hamiltonkibbe » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 4:20 PM UTC

JonnieCache wrote: post #24

jacquesm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, what a find. A tape based sampler. Amazing. That would be so much fun to restore to working condition.

It's an offshoot of the Mellotron[1] which was basically the original sampler. The mellotron was/is a keyboard where pressing each key spooled out and played back an individual tape strip of a real string section, cello, flute etc. It's the string sound that's really famous and recognisable. The mechanisms make a VHS look simple, see the wiki article for diagrams. The linked machine is a read-write version of the mel…

And the Strawberry Fields flute sound!

Re: For Sale: Soviet Military Ferrite Core Memory Stack Cube and Manual

#30

Post by consider_this » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 4:20 PM UTC

This is a very cool find. Thanks for sharing.