this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
3 points (100.0% liked)
Memes
45719 readers
821 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
And it wasn't just a 4KB "stick" of RAM or something, it was literally magnetic rings threaded onto wires called Magentic Core Memory. Further, 4 KB implies that it was 4096 bytes, but it was actually 2048 "words" consisting of 15-bits (+1 parity bit) [source]. 2048 words requiring 16 bits each means 32,768 magnetic rings weaved onto tiny wires. Oh, and another fun detail about magnetic core memory is that if you read a value, I.e check to see if one of those magnetic rings is set to 0 or 1, that is a destructive operation. So if you wanted to read without deleting, you have to read and then immediately rewrite.