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

#51

Post by JonnieCache » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 5:20 PM UTC

neverm0re wrote: post #45

JonnieCache wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Autechre was the first thing I thought about when I read your post :)

I was thinking more about hooking up a deck to an arduino and sending the "skip track" command at 20hz, or something like that. Record, chop, loop, and you're away.

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

#52

Post by JoeAltmaier » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 5:20 PM UTC

DenisM wrote: post #47

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...

Mine wasn't; after a while every time I set it down, little broken cores would rain down. They apparently decay over time.

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

#53

Post by mhb » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 5:24 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #22

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

As well as the audiophile-pleasing sound on those planes.

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

#54

Post by Arnor » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 5:25 PM UTC

unwind wrote: post #7

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.

Actually traditionally it's 9 KB, or 9 KiB if you're into the modern binary prefixes. 9 kB would be 9,000 bytes, but this seems to be (4,096 * 18) / 8 = 9,216 bytes, which is exactly 9 KB. Or maybe I'm just a hopeless old f*rt for caring about things like this, and the world needs to get off my lawn.

I obsess over these pedantic differences too and I'm repeatedly pitches 3.5" floppies onto your lawn

NERD SHAME EDIT: It's been a while... 3.5"

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

#55

Post by mhb » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 5:28 PM UTC

ak217 wrote: post #15

Someone please buy this and loan it out to the Computer History Museum!

These aren't that rare. You can buy yourself a single board for significantly less:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_sacat=0&_from=R40&_nkw=ferri...

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

#56

Post by mikeash » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 5:31 PM UTC

noobs wrote: post #28

nsxwolf wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

A 1914 D wheat penny was worth, you guessed it, US $0.01 in 1914, but that doesn't mean the current going price of around $3,500 is overpriced.

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

#57

Post by vsviridov » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 5:38 PM UTC

It's kinda awesome, that the literal title of the manual is "Exploitation manual" :)

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

#58

Post by jlgreco » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 5:46 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #40

smackfu wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Generally you can get completely obsolete very cool old hardware for not much of a premium on raw shipping cost. Yes, in theory, museums should want this stuff, but they don't. And it doesn't matter if the board cost $50k originally and is military-spec and uses crazy high-end components. Most sellers just want an alternative to throwing it out. There's a guy on Youtube who buys stuff like this and takes it…

I guarantee you that this assembly did not cost the local equivalent of $50 originally.

Maybe in raw materials. ;)

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

#59

Post by mhb » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 5:51 PM UTC

For the money, I'd prefer a Curta calculator:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1311.R...

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

#60

Post by arethuza » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 5:52 PM UTC

tachyonbeam wrote: post #49

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Only to discover that the code to launch the missiles at the Soviets was set to 00000000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link