Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!boulder!unicads!les
From: les@unicads.UUCP (Les Milash)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: WOM(Write Only Memory): also the SED and the DED
Message-ID: <463@unicads.UUCP>
Date: 23 May 89 17:44:08 GMT
References: <184@berlioz.nsc.com> <1227@motmpl.UUCP> <2365@wpi.wpi.edu> <2936@buengc.BU.EDU>
Reply-To: les@unicads.UUCP (Les Milash)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Unicad  Boulder, CO
Lines: 56

In various articles vaarious folks write various stuff, but i had '>' stack
overflow...
>>>  Write-Only Memory (WOM).
>(who was the original manufacturer, anybody remember?)

I heard from my former boss that it was Signetics, but i was just a baby then.

>>Speaking of new products, I'd like to introduce my new display devices: the
>>SED (smoke emitting diode) and DED (dark emitting diode).  Actually, normal LEDs
Heck, my company'll custom-fab you Solid Amorphous Display ("SAD") arrays,
for your next laptop; they're HOT!  3000x4000 pixels @ 60Hz,
(only one state--sorry!  but you get to choose which at least, "mirror-like"
or "glass-like".)  available in large-screen sizes for those large laps.
oh yeah there's also "steel-like" for those rad-hard apps.

>graduation requirement that all students do at least one substantial
							  ^^^^^^^^^^
>experiment with an SED.  As one of our graduates put to me a couple years
>ago, "I've had a meltdown, hell you're not an engineer until you've at
>least one meltdown."
well back in my homebrew 2901 days i turned a fastfast 8kbit big-bux SRAM into
a 7kbit SRAM (ouch!).  maybe the other bits were still ok in there but i sure
couldn't tell.  actually i wasn't using all 4 bytes, only about 28 or 30 bits,
so with a wee hw and sw mod, nema problema!  Redundant Instruction Width Proc!

pretty soon i'm gonna power up a meg of dram and $828 worth of
INMOS T800, you can bet i'll quadruple check the wiring on that one.
now THAT'd be a "substantial" meltdown; might as well emit a hari-kari knife
for max convenience.

>It seems he was fooling around in the backplane and somehow had managed to
>jumper the logic to the 100V ac.
>"Oh Shit." He said.
i guess he knew the correct technical term.  great war story.  i once learned 
what happens when you use your 1-150 mA range instead of the 1-150 VDC to 
check the "Vcc" or whatever of a tube amp.  the needle hit the peg so hard 
it bent.  glad I didn't fry it, you could compensate for the bend by 
subtracting about 10% of full scale.

ENOUGH SPLATTER STORIES; here's _my_bright_idea_ for the semiconductor industry:

i wish i could buy a T800 with a big fab defect, cheap, in the PGA, to do
the first power-up test.  i don't even care if there's a bullet hole right
in the register file, as long as it boots, reads and writes, and refreshes.
they could sell it for the cost of packaging it, make some profit, 
and we'd all win.  they better not try to amortize their testing cost with
these, tho.

i guess you Real Designers get it right the first time, right?; that's what all 
that Electrical Engineering stuff is for, huh?  i guess it'd be a big bummer
to put 1500 boards of ECL in a big round box and bolt the power supply on
backwards, huh?  or run the freon cooler in heat-pump mode.  maybe you're not 
a Supercomputer Engineer till you've done that.  yuck.

maybe we should start comp.arch.funny?
and now back to our regularly scheduled newsgroup...