Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!littlei!reed!percival!bucket!leonard
From: leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Core memory
Message-ID: <961@bucket.UUCP>
Date: 20 Jul 88 23:20:49 GMT
References: <1486@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <1010@garth.UUCP> <458@buengc.BU.EDU>
Reply-To: leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson)
Organization: Rick's Home Grown Unix; Portland, OR
Lines: 27

In article <458@buengc.BU.EDU> bph@buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
<In article <1010@garth.UUCP> smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan) writes:
<>
<>... Last I heard, the Shuttle memories are cores. A core memory
<>can retain its information for hours, weeks, or years without any power.
<
<You are kidding, aren't you?  core is the lowest-density recording
<medium since paper tape.  The shuttle would use bubbles for nonvolatile,
<read-write memory, I would hope.  Even EEROM, which must be in the
<system somewhere...  Not even NASA would be 15 years behind on
<technology... ;-)

Uh, hate to burst your bubble, but *all* of the Shuttle hardware uses 
15-20 year-old technology. Remember? It was designed that long ago, and
they wanted reliablity, not state-of-the-art.

I seem to recall hearing that it doesn't even use microprocessors.
In any case, you don't use things like modern static or dynamic RAM chips
in space applications. A cosmic rays and the like will be guaranteed to
zap memory cells frequently. I don't know if the use core, but it would
be *safer*. 

-- 
Leonard Erickson		...!tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard
CIS: [70465,203]
"I used to be a hacker. Now I'm a 'microcomputer specialist'.
You know... I'd rather be a hacker."