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12-bit Computing
Before the widespread adoption of ASCII in the late 1960s, six-bit character codes were common and a 12-bit word, which could hold two characters, was a convenient size. This also made it useful for storing a single decimal digit along with a sign. Possibly the best-known 12-bit CPUs are the PDP-8 and its descendants (such as the Intersil 6100 microprocessor), which were produced in various forms from August 1963 to mid-1990. Many Analog-to-digital converter, analog to digital converters (ADCs) have a 12-bit resolution. Some PIC microcontrollers use a 12-bit instruction word but handle only 8-bit data. 12 binary digits, or 3 nibbles (a 'tribble'), have 4096 (10000 octal, 1000 hexadecimal) distinct combinations. Hence, a microprocessor with 12-bit memory addresses can directly access 4096 Word (computer architecture), words (4 kW) of word-addressable memory. IBM System/360 instruction formats use a 12-bit displacement field which, added to the contents of a base register, can ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ASCII
ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control characters a total of 128 code points. The set of available punctuation had significant impact on the syntax of computer languages and text markup. ASCII hugely influenced the design of character sets used by modern computers; for example, the first 128 code points of Unicode are the same as ASCII. ASCII encodes each code-point as a value from 0 to 127 storable as a seven-bit integer. Ninety-five code-points are printable, including digits ''0'' to ''9'', lowercase letters ''a'' to ''z'', uppercase letters ''A'' to ''Z'', and commonly used punctuation symbols. For example, the letter is represented as 105 (decimal). Also, ASCII specifies 33 non-printing control codes which originated with ; most of which are now obsolete. The control cha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ford EEC
The Ford EEC or Electronic Engine Control is a series of ECU (or Engine Control Unit) that was designed and built by Ford Motor Company. The first system, EEC I, used processors and components developed by Toshiba in 1973. It began production in 1974, and went into mass production in 1975. It subsequently went through several model iterations. EEC I and II The EEC I and EEC II modules used a common processor and memory so they can be described together. The microprocessor was a 12-bit central processing unit manufactured by Toshiba, the TLCS-12, which began development in 1971 and was completed in 1973. It was a 32mm² chip with about 2,800 silicon gates, manufactured on a 6 μm process. The system's semiconductor memory included 512-bit RAM, 2 kb ROM and 2kb EPROM. The system began production in 1974, and went into mass production in 1975. The EEC-II controlled air-fuel ratio via Ford's model 7200 Variable Venturi (VV) Carburetor, the last carburetor designed and b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
LINC
The LINC (Laboratory INstrument Computer) is a 12-bit, 2048-word transistorized computer. The LINC is considered by some to be the first minicomputer and a forerunner to the personal computer. Originally named the Linc, suggesting the project's origins at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, it was renamed LINC after the project moved from the Lincoln Laboratory. The LINC was designed by Wesley A. Clark and Charles Molnar. The LINC and other "MIT Group" machines were designed at MIT and eventually built by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and Spear Inc. of Waltham, Massachusetts (later a division of Becton, Dickinson and Company). The LINC sold for more than $40,000 at the time. A typical configuration included an enclosed 6'X20" rack; four boxes holding (1) two tape drives, (2) display scope and input knobs, (3) control console and (4) data terminal interface; and a keyboard. The LINC interfaced well with laboratory experiments. Analog inputs and outputs were part of the basic de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ferranti Argus
Ferranti's Argus computers were a line of industrial control computers offered from the 1960s into the 1980s. Originally designed for a military role, a re-packaged Argus was the first digital computer to be used to directly control an entire factory. They were widely used in a variety of roles in Europe, particularly in the UK, where a small number continue to serve as monitoring and control systems for nuclear reactors. Original series Blue Envoy, hearing aid computer The original concept for the computer was developed as part of the Blue Envoy missile project. This was a very long-range surface-to-air missile system with a range on the order of . To reach these ranges, the missile was "lofted" in a nearly vertical trajectory at launch, flying as quickly as possible to high altitude where it suffered less drag during the subsequent long cruise toward the target. During the vertical climb, the missile's radar would not be able to see the target, so during this period it was com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PC12 Minicomputer
PC12 by Artronix was a minicomputer built with 7400-series integrated circuits, 7400-series TTL technology and Ferrite (magnet), ferrite core memory. Computers were manufactured at the Artronix facility in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. The instruction set architecture was adapted from the LINC, the only significant change was to expand addressable memory to 4K, which required addition of an origin register. It was an accumulator machine with 12-bit addresses to manipulate 12-bit data. Later versions included "origin registers" that were used to extend the addressability of memory. Arithmetic was ones' complement. For mass storage it had a LINC#LINCtape, LINCtape dual unit. It also used a Tektronix screen with tube memory and an Analog-to-digital converter, ADC/Digital-to-analog converter, DAC to capture and display images. There was an optional plotter to draw the results. To speed up the calculations it had a separate floating point unit that interfaced like any other peripher ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ND812
The 12-bit ND812, produced by Nuclear Data, Inc., was a commercial minicomputer developed for the scientific computing market. Nuclear Data introduced it in 1970 at a price under $10,000 (). Description The architecture has a simple programmed I/O bus, plus a Direct memory access, DMA channel. The programmed I/O bus typically runs low to medium-speed peripherals, such as printer (computing), printers, Teleprinter, teletypes, paper tape punches and readers, while DMA is used for cathode ray tube screens with a light pen, analog-to-digital converters, digital-to-analog converters, tape drives, disk drives. The Word (data type), word size, 12 bits, is large enough to handle unsigned integers from 0 to 4095 – wide enough for controlling simple machinery. This is also enough to handle signed numbers from -2048 to +2047. This is higher precision than a slide rule or most analog computers. Twelve bits could also store two six-bit character code, six-bit characters (note, six-bit is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Data, Inc
Nuclear may refer to: Physics Relating to the nucleus of the atom: * Nuclear engineering * Nuclear physics * Nuclear power *Nuclear reactor *Nuclear weapon * Nuclear medicine *Radiation therapy *Nuclear warfare Mathematics * Nuclear space * Nuclear operator * Nuclear congruence *Nuclear C*-algebra Biology Relating to the nucleus of the cell: * Nuclear DNA Society *Nuclear family, a family consisting of a pair of adults and their children Music * "Nuclear" (band), chilean thrash metal band * "Nuclear" (Ryan Adams song), 2002 *"Nuclear", a song by Mike Oldfield from his ''Man on the Rocks'' album * ''Nu.Clear'' (EP) by South Korean girl group CLC Films * ''Nuclear'' (film), a 2022 documentary by Oliver Stone. See also *Nucleus (other) *Nucleolus *Nucleation *Nucleic acid Nucleic acids are large biomolecules that are crucial in all cells and viruses. They are composed of nucleotides, which are the monomer components: a pentose, 5-carbon sugar, a phosphate group an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientific Data Systems
Scientific Data Systems (SDS), was an American computer company founded in September 1961 by Max Palevsky, Arthur Rock and Robert Beck, veterans of Packard Bell Corporation and Bendix, along with eleven other computer scientists. SDS was the first to employ silicon transistors, and was an early adopter of integrated circuits in computer design. The company concentrated on larger scientific workload focused machines and sold many machines to NASA during the Space Race. Most machines were both fast and relatively low-priced. The company was sold to Xerox in 1969, but dwindling sales due to the oil crisis of 1973–74 caused Xerox to close the division in 1975 at a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars. During the Xerox years the company was officially Xerox Data Systems (XDS), whose machines were the Xerox 500 series. History Early machines Throughout the majority of the 1960s the US computer market was dominated by "Snow White", IBM, and the "Seven Dwarves", Burroughs, UN ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NCR 315
The NCR 315 Data Processing System, released in January 1962 by NCR, is a second-generation computer. All printed circuit boards use resistor–transistor logic (RTL) to create the various logic elements. It uses 12-bit ''slab'' memory structure using magnetic-core memory. The instructions can use a memory slab as either two 6-bit alphanumeric characters or as three 4-bit BCD digits. Basic memory is 5000 "slabs" (10,000 characters or 15,000 decimal digits) of handmade core memory, which is expandable to a maximum of 40,000 slabs (80,000 characters or 120,000 decimal digits) in four refrigerator-size cabinets. The main processor includes three cabinets and a console section that houses the power supply, keyboard, output writer (an IBM electric typewriter), and a panel with lights that indicate the current status of the program counter, registers, arithmetic accumulator, and system errors. Input/Output is by direct parallel connections to each type of peripheral through a tw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Cash Register
NCR Voyix Corporation, previously known as NCR Corporation and National Cash Register, is a global software, consulting and technology company providing several professional services and electronic products. It manufactured self-service kiosks, point-of-sale terminals, automated teller machines, check processing systems, and barcode scanners. NCR was founded in Dayton, Ohio, in 1884. It grew to become a dominant market leader in cash registers, then decryption machinery, then computing machinery, and computers over the subsequent 100 years. By 1991, it was still the fifth-largest manufacturer of computers. That year, it was acquired by AT&T. A restructuring of AT&T in 1996 led to NCR's re-establishment on January 1, 1997, as a separate company and involved the spin-off of Lucent Technologies from AT&T. In June 2009, the company sold most of the Dayton properties and moved its headquarters to the Atlanta metropolitan area, near Duluth. In early January 2018, the new NCR ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CDC 6600
The CDC 6600 was the flagship of the 6000 series of mainframe computer systems manufactured by Control Data Corporation. Generally considered to be the first successful supercomputer, it outperformed the industry's prior recordholder, the IBM 7030 Stretch, by a factor of three."Designed by Seymour Cray, the CDC 6600 was almost three times faster than the next fastest machine of its day, the IBM 7030 Stretch." With performance of up to three megaFLOPS, the CDC 6600 was the world's fastest computer from 1964 to 1969, when it relinquished that status to its successor, the CDC 7600."The 7600 design lasted longer than any other supercomputer design. It had the highest performance of any computer from its introduction in 1969 till the introduction of the Cray 1 in 1976." The first CDC 6600s were delivered in 1965 to Livermore and Los Alamos. They quickly became a must-have system in high-end scientific and mathematical computing, with systems being delivered to Couran ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CDC 160 Series
The CDC 160 series was a series of minicomputers built by Control Data Corporation. The CDC 160 and CDC 160-A were 12-bit minicomputers built from 1960 to 1965; the CDC 160G was a 13-bit minicomputer, with an extended version of the CDC 160-A instruction set, and a compatibility mode in which it did not use the 13th bit. The 160 was designed by Seymour Cray - reportedly over a long three-day weekend. It fit into the desk where its operator sat. The 160 architecture uses ones' complement arithmetic with end-around carry. NCR joint-marketed the 160-A under its own name for several years in the 1960s. Overview A publishing company that purchased a CDC 160-A described it as "a single user machine with no batch processing capability. Programmers and/or users would go to the computer room, sit at the console, load the paper tape bootstrap and start up a program." The CDC 160-A was a simple piece of hardware, and yet provided a variety of features which were scaled-down capabilitie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
