On The Metal

Ken Shirriff

12 snips
Jan 26, 2021
Ken Shirriff, a tech enthusiast, dives into the complexity of a Soyuz spacecraft digital clock, the evolution of computer tech from IBM to Intel, and the significance of little Indian and big Indian in computing. He explores restoring the Alto computer, pre-boot networking, analog computers minig Bitcoin, and the evolution of memory technology from core to MOS memory.
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ANECDOTE

Tiny Soyuz Clock, Huge TTL Complexity

  • Ken opened a Soyuz spacecraft digital clock expecting a single chip and found 10 circuit boards and over 100 TTL chips inside.
  • He traced wiring harnesses, used a Russian databook and Google Translate to decode the design and confirmed it was essentially a 1970s-style TTL clock.
ANECDOTE

Learning Fortran On Punch Cards

  • Ken got hands-on experience with punch-card computing in seventh grade, writing Fortran programs on a university mainframe.
  • He punched decks, stood in operator lines, debugged listings, and learned programming workflow from that era.
INSIGHT

Bit-Slice CPUs Were Lego For Processors

  • Bit-slice chips like the AMD AM2901 provided ALU and registers but left control to external sequencers and microcode, enabling custom CPU designs from modular parts.
  • They excelled in speed (bipolar/ECL) but lost to low-power CMOS as transistor tech advanced.
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