Magnetic Core Memory

Wanderer-Werke / Nixdorf / Siemens-Nixdorf

• http://www.hnf.de/en/home.html - Heinz Nixdorf Forum (Biggest Computer Museum in the World)
• http://www.xnumber.com/xnumber/nixdorf.htm - Heinz Nixdorf
• http://www.xnumber.com/xnumber/nixdorf2.htm - Heinz Nixdorf and the Nixdorf Computer AG

I was attending night classes at Conestoga College during the Spring of 1974 (Digital Electronics 1) when I learned that a fellow classmate had a job doing computer installations and removals. When he told me that some older hardware at his current work location (Cambridge, Ontario) location was going to be discarded, I asked him for a souvenir. A week later he handed me this 3-board gem manufactured by German computer manufacturer Wanderer-Werke (now a division of Siemens-Nixdorf).

The photo to the right is from one corner of one of the boards. Notice the double-W (representing Wanderer-Werke)

Carefully inspect the two photographs below where we can see magnetic core memory. These pictures only contain discreet components like transistors. There are no chips (a.k.a. integrated circuits)

Bubble Memory

• The first photo shows a PCA with Northern Telecom part number is NT5A55 (from a DMS-100). Not sure how this board made it to a local junk shop but I bought it for $5 circa 1995
• The second photo shows a closer view of the Intel Bubble Memory Module with part number 7110 (1 megabit non-volatile storage)
  caveat: a double-side 3-1/2 inch floppy disk at that time could store 1.2 MB which is ~ 10x larger
• This technology died out in the early 1990s due to the increasing popularity of EEPROM (electrically erasable programmable read only memory) and flash memory
• Datasheet: Intel 7110 (8 pages)
• https://www.intel-vintage.info/intelbubblememory.htm
• https://hackaday.com/2020/04/19/magnetic-bubble-memory-farewell-tour/

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Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.