IBM mainframe legacy memory chip

Hi, hoping someone can help me. My son recently brought home a piece of an old mainframe IBM computer, dating from the 70's I would guess. It's impossible to describe, but I have a picture of it. Only thing I can see of a any relevance is IBM 52 on some of the chips. It's huge! I imagine it would take around half a million of them now to match my two gigs ram now. If I could post a picture of it I would, it's quite amazing. Any guesses what IBM mainframe it belonged to?

Many thanks

Tim

Body [quote="tjjohn1001"]Hi, hoping someone can help me. My son recently brought home a piece of an old mainframe IBM computer, dating from the 70's I would guess. It's impossible to describe, but I have a picture of it. Only thing I can see of a any relevance is IBM 52 on some of the chips. It's huge! I imagine it would take around half a million of them now to match my two gigs ram now. If I could post a picture of it I would, it's quite amazing. Any guesses what IBM mainframe it belonged to? Many thanks Tim[/quote]

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I just measured it too, it's around 9 1/2 inches by 7 1/2 inches...it's a pull out memory card, my god how technology has advanced!

Body [quote="tjjohn1001"]I just measured it too, it's around 9 1/2 inches by 7 1/2 inches...it's a pull out memory card, my god how technology has advanced![/quote]

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It's most likely REAL core memory. Little ferrite beads on a grid of intersecting wires. The little beads would be magnetized so the system could read the code words of the boot-up routines and retrieve stored data.

Body [quote="Xwindowsjunkie"]It's most likely REAL core memory. Little ferrite beads on a grid of intersecting wires. The little beads would be magnetized so the system could read the code words of the boot-up routines and retrieve stored data.[/quote]

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Thanks, I'm no expert, so that's probably it. You sound quite experienced. There are the beads of solder in a grid as you describe, however there are also many little black chips on it, plus a row of about four square silver chips that are almost the size of today's typical home pc processors. I wonder if there's a central IBM hardware database for these sort of things? I just like to solve mysteries like this!

Cheers,

Tim

Body [quote="tjjohn1001"]Thanks, I'm no expert, so that's probably it. You sound quite experienced. There are the beads of solder in a grid as you describe, however there are also many little black chips on it, plus a row of about four square silver chips that are almost the size of today's typical home pc processors. I wonder if there's a central IBM hardware database for these sort of things? I just like to solve mysteries like this! Cheers, Tim[/quote]

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