[Milsurplus] Old CPUs

[Edward Greeley]

While we are digressing ever so briefly from the subject of the group, 
I'd like to relate my first exposure to the then-exotic technology of 
core and drum memory. This even touches on military electronics.

In 1956 I was an Air Force civilian heavy ground radar installer (an 
installer OF heavy ground radar, not...you know). For some reason, I was 
selected to go to the first Burroughs Corp. factory school on a piece of 
equipment called the AN/FST-2 Coordinate Data Transmitting Set. What a 
"set"! It had about a gazillion tubes, and a very few transistors. The 
school, BTW, was at Burroughs' Great Valley facility outside of Philly 
and at Burruoghs leased space on Broad St. in downtown Philly.

The "T-2" as it was lovingly (?) called was designed to be installed at 
each of the radar "prime" sites (as opposed to gap-fillers) that were to 
be connected to the AN/FSQ-7/8 SAGE Direction/Combat Centers in block 
houses around the country. The T-2 was more of a data processing and 
forwarding device although, at the time, many people called it a "computer".

This thing had a whopping core memory of 4K, IIRC, whose function I 
don't remember, and a mag drum of MANY channels whose main function was 
track data storage from sweep to sweep of the radar to which it was 
connected. The T-2 was a dual channel set for redundancy, so there were 
two of everything.

Those memory elements just boggled my mind! The only short-term data 
storage I had encountered previously were the mercury delay lines used 
in MTI systems and the l-o-o-o-ng lengths of folded waveguide used in 
GCA sets. That was a real eye opener to (then) modern technology.

The Burroughs factory school was nearly six months long and when I 
returned to my home base I was no longer a radar installer. I was 
assigned to be a "contract monitor" (officially: Technical 
Representative of the Contracting Officer or "TRCO"). I inspected many 
installations and monitored the acceptance tests of T-2s performed by 
Burroughs Corp. around the country. The Burroughs techs usually got real 
nervous when I was watching them adjust the heads on the drums as the 
clearance was VERY close. I only ever saw them "run in" the heads 
(against the drum, good-bye drum!) once or twice though.

Ed Greedy