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From: Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.pl1
Subject: Re: Why is Ada considered "too specialized" for scientific use
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2010 17:56:32 -0400
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Date: 2010-06-07T17:56:32-04:00
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J. Clarke wrote:
> On 6/7/2010 8:35 AM, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) wrote:
>> Le Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:40:07 +0200, Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@yahoo.com>
>> a écrit:
>>> If you want to talk *really* old assemblers, look at SOAP. The
>>> hardware had no core, only drum memory,
>> What is a “drum memory” ?
> 
> Are you serious?
> 
> You remember those old Edison phonographs that used a wax cylinder? Well 
> imagine that concept only with the cylinder coated with magnetic 
> material instead of wax, and with a row (or several rows) of heads along 
> its length.  Has most of the properties of a fixed-head disk except the 
> unequal track lengths.
> 
> 

That's it.  I believe it was an IBM 704, although probably other old 
computers used them also.  Drums were popular as storage on systems, 
even with disks, because, being head per track, they were much faster. 
They were often used as a swap medium.

This is a little far afield for these three NGs.