For sale is a Standard Memories Model MM132-1Magnetic Memory Core board
Assembly# 102293-001, Serial# 10198.
Very good condition, this board measures 15" x 15" x approx. 3/8" thick with components. Board alone weighs 2 pounds 10.4 ounces.
The following is from ChatGPT:
"This is not conventional semiconductor RAM.
It is a magnetic-core memory board.
The important details visible in your photos are:
- Manufacturer: Standard Memories, a subsidiary of Applied Magnetics
- Assembly: 102293-001
- Model: MM132-1
- Serial: 10198
- Made in Santa Ana, California
- The large woven rectangular section is the ferrite magnetic-core array.
- The surrounding TTL logic, sense amplifiers, drivers, and power circuitry operates the core array.
- The board has an edge connector intended to plug directly into the computer's memory backplane.
Standard Memories was specifically a manufacturer of magnetic-core computer memory. Contemporary documentation describes its ECOM products as core-memory systems, and by the early 1970s the company was supplying replacement/add-on core memory for systems including IBM and DEC computers.
You can actually see thousands of tiny ferrite cores threaded by the X/Y/inhibit/sense wires. That's why the center of the board (see pictures where protective cover is slid open) looks like a finely woven fabric.
This technology has an important characteristic that modern RAM doesn't:
It is nonvolatile.
When power is removed, the magnetic state of the cores remains.
That's one reason core memory was so valuable in 1960s–1970s computers. Intel's own historical oral history notes that core memory was the primary computer memory technology when Intel began, specifically emphasizing its nonvolatile nature. "
It was thought these boards with ferrite core memories could survive an EMP pulse from a nuclear blast unlike their silicon counterparts. Please do not test this feature.
All our items are sold "AS IS". The item you will get is the actual item pictured.
Please study the photographs carefully and email with any questions prior to purchase. Additional photos are available upon request.
