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

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

#41

Post by ChuckMcM »

I wonder if it is radioactive. :-) There was a brief flurry of selling various rare Russian military parts that had been scavenged from equipment that had been left behind in the towns around Chernobyl.

Probably not, and it is a fun artifact. I've got a number of PDP-8 core memories (actually in PDP-8's :-) which are much less rare. That said, if you're looking for a parent/child project, or just a fun project, you can make a bit of "core memory" out of a #2 iron nut, a couple of full bridges, and an opamp. We did this with the kids for a science project once and its a lot of fun. You get to learn about hysteresis, the inherent 'analog' nature of digital machines, and with careful planning you could impractically hide information in the spare nuts drawer in the garage :-).

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

#42

Post by VladRussian2 »

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #4

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

it is just ferrittes strung on copper wire lattice, no component to "break" until it is really physically broken.

What i've been wondering for many years about is why such schema wasn't miniaturized? We have disk plates with high density in HDDs, and the magnetic head is physically moving. Imagine if instead of the magnetic head there would be a [miniaturized] lattice similar in principle to the one on this image http://sovietsouvenirs.com/catalog/images/ic/core_memory-15-.... The similar principle is used in flash memory, yet in the flash memory it is electrons trapped in the floating gate instead of magnetic domains with all the problems (durability, sustained write speed) of flash vs. magnetic disks.

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

#43

Post by JonnieCache »

neverm0re wrote: post #38
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.

You can build 'em out of essentially scrap parts fairly easily, actually. There's also dumps of the Melloton's sample reels floating around if you particularly want that sound rather than producing your own. Peter Christopherson and Chris Carter of Throbbing Gristle made their own tape loop sampler out of car tape decks, some simple soldering and a keyboard controller in the late 70s. They could control the pitch, re…

>seamless shuffle (!!!)

In a few years, when I inevitably get bored of melody and back into brain-melting glitch music, this is what I'm doing.

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

#44

Post by [deleted] »

neverm0re wrote: post #38
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.

You can build 'em out of essentially scrap parts fairly easily, actually. There's also dumps of the Melloton's sample reels floating around if you particularly want that sound rather than producing your own. Peter Christopherson and Chris Carter of Throbbing Gristle made their own tape loop sampler out of car tape decks, some simple soldering and a keyboard controller in the late 70s. They could control the pitch, re…

[deleted]

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

#45

Post by neverm0re »

JonnieCache wrote: post #43
neverm0re wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can build 'em out of essentially scrap parts fairly easily, actually. There's also dumps of the Melloton's sample reels floating around if you particularly want that sound rather than producing your own. Peter Christopherson and Chris Carter of Throbbing Gristle made their own tape loop sampler out of car tape decks, some simple soldering and a keyboard controller in the late 70s. They could control the pitch, re…

>seamless shuffle (!!!) In a few years, when I inevitably get bored of melody and back into brain-melting glitch music, this is what I'm doing.

You might wanna check out Autechre's side project Gescom, specifically the 'MiniDisc' album: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minidisc_%28Gescom_minidisc%29

They abuse seamless shuffle with an 88 track minidisc album that's designed to be played on random shuffle. It basically sounds like a Farmer's Manual album, but it's still wild.

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

#47

Post by DenisM »

I had a heap of these at home as a kid, only they were slightly different in that they ferrite rings and the wires were encased in a gel to reduce mechanical strain (so likely a later design). Had I only known they would be selling for thousands of dollars...

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

#48

Post by jrabone »

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.

Interesting that the power plate indicates 60 Hz supply - yet the UK is 50 Hz. Perhaps stretching things for the title to claim it's "from" the BBC, as opposed to "as used by" - this one was most likely was made for the US market. I wonder what its provenance was?

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

#49

Post by tachyonbeam »

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #35
gvb wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Core memory is non-volatile. If you hooked it up to a computer, you could read out what was written into it. Theoretically. NASA recovered the Challenger's core memory out of the ocean and was able to read it out months after the disaster. "On March 19, 1986, NASA announced that four of five Challenger General Purpose Computers (GPC) had been recovered from the Atlantic and moved to the IBM Federal Systems Division f…

I was going to respond that to the parent, but you beat me :) Imagine hooking up and figuring out you can read it? Even better, imagine it contains nuke launch codes (in the best soviet-from-secret-agent-movie tradition)?!

And imagine teenagers ended up acquiring it, and getting access to those launch codes! cue Hollywood movie scenario

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

#50

Post by negativity »

VladRussian2 wrote: post #42
hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #4

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

it is just ferrittes strung on copper wire lattice, no component to "break" until it is really physically broken. What i've been wondering for many years about is why such schema wasn't miniaturized? We have disk plates with high density in HDDs, and the magnetic head is physically moving. Imagine if instead of the magnetic head there would be a [miniaturized] lattice similar in principle to the one on this image htt…

Rust is still a problem with those little ferrite rings, though.

Depending on the environment you maintain for this device, it can actually be pretty delicate. I have some old (~25 year-old) electric motors, where the magnetic properties of the bigger ferrite rings have been degraded by rust. I guess it probably depends of the quality of the piece.

This means there could be one tiny rusty ring in one of the center planes, and that would effectively result in a bad block that exhibits inconsistent behavior for that single bit. A person would have to test for that. It could be programmed around, and you could still have a fully functional object, minus one byte or word (or bit, depending on how you approach it).

You'd also want to keep it free of dust, since dust CAN be metallic, magnetic and conductive. The item for sale looks like it's been taken care of nicely!

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