We are always fascinated by bubble memory. In the late 1970s, this was the “Next Big Thing” that, as you may have guessed, was, in fact, not the next big thing at all. But there were a number of products that used it as non-volatile memory at a time when the alternative was tape or disk. [Smbakeryt] has a cool word processor with an acoustic coupler modem made by Teleram. Inside is — you guessed it — bubble memory.
The keyboard was nonfunctional, but fixable. Although we wouldn’t have guessed the problem. Bubble memory was quite high tech. It used magnetic domains circulating on a thin film of magnetic material. Under the influence of a driving field, the bubbles would march past a read-write head that could create, destroy, or read the state of the bubble.
Why didn’t it succeed? Well, hard drives got cheap and fairly rugged. The technology couldn’t compete with the high-density hard drives that could be reached with improved heads and recording strategies. Bubble memory did find use in high-vibration items, but also wound up in things like this terminal, at least one oscilloscope, and a video game.
Bubble memory evolved from twistor memory, one of several pre-disk technologies. While they are hard to come by today, you can find the occasional project that either uses some surplus or steals a part off of a device like this one.
First link is broken, fyi
Thanks. Fixed.
Brilliant, the original owner was an Apple fan (see 1:54 in the video). Also, interestingly, doble-quote is on ‘2’, which is normal for UK, PC keyboards, but modern US or Mac keyboards have it above apostrophe.
But then again, top-row symbols are somewhat typewriter: { ‘!’, ‘”‘, ‘#’, ‘$’, ‘%’, ‘&’, ”’, ‘(‘, ‘)’ } instead of { ‘!’, ‘@’, ‘#’, ‘$’, ‘^’, ‘%’, ‘&’, ‘*’, ‘(‘, ‘)’ }. Quite a number of early computer keyboards had ‘%’ to ‘)’ over ‘6’ to ‘9’ instead of ‘7’ to ‘0’, which means that if you’re playing with an 8-bit retro computer, you continually have to remember that.
The screen is very dinky – especially with the small font.
-which means that if you’re playing with an 8-bit retro computer, you continually have to remember that
Ha! Not if I never learned to type properly and have to constantly glance down at the keyboard anyway! #LifeHack
FYI: the first link in the post links to the WP-admin panel of hackaday.com.
Thanks! Fixed.
I only had the pleasure of working with bubble memory once. I was working as a comp. tech. in the Mt. Lassen area of California, USA during the early 1990s. The forest service brought in pair of CP/M “lap tops”, similar in configuration as the Tandy 100. They had 4 C cell NiCads for power. The units were brought in “dead”. I fixed them. The bubble memory was the primary “disk” (A:). I was told they were “critical” since they were used to encode “packet radio” to coordinate the efforts of fire fighting teams. Traditional IBM PC style laptops were still considerably bulkier and battery hungry. Plus someone would need to rewrite the software. I’m sure they have been replaced by now.
I wish I could remember the make and model…
There were other Kyocera machines – the Oliveti, The NEC PC-8300, and there was one that was only shaped like an M100 – the Epson HX-20. One of those perhaps?
It doesn’t appear to be any of those. :-(
Grid Compass perhaps? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_Compass
Sorry, no. It was just like the model 100. no moving parts. Keyboard was the bottom 3/4ths of the case and a 4ish line LCD across the top.
I interned at TIE Communications and wrote z80 based diagnostics for their voice announcement option card that used this same Intel bubble memory. It was 1Mbit of reliable, low power, and non- volatile storage that tolerated being in a poorly ventilated equipment closet. Pretty cool part at the time!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ML8oAKlqhE
In the early 1980s, I helped deploy Fujitsu cash registers at Aaron Brothers art supply stores in California (a close relative of these: https://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/corporate/history/products/computer/terminal/tfc7880.html ) which were state of the art for a minute. We got enormous sheets from Fujitsu and filled in bubbles to determine values to poke into memory registers. Modem settings, receipt designs, and display layout were saved in these teensy, tiny storage spaces. It was a fun challenge to write something elaborate within the constraints.
I had the rare experience of being a technician in the Texas Instruments Bubble Memory applications group not long after being hired by TI. I remember the only product TI produced with a bubble memory device was a portable terminal with a built-in phone modem and a thermal paper printer. There were rumors that it might be made part of the TI 99/4A or even be put in a satellite computer but those never came to fruition. A fascinating feature of bubble memory was the ability to physically view (under IR light I believe) the bubbles move up and around the chevron patterned substrate. I did get to see it first hand and videos of it were circulated around at the time for advertising purposes. I believe the “bubble memory” moniker came about because the “bits” were perfect circles under the light. TI did a good job producing a reliable 92Kb bubble memory device and was in the process of producing 256Kb, 512Kb, and 1Mb devices when they finally realized they couldn’t keep up with the hard drive technology. As was mentioned in the earlier comments, it took a rotating magnetic field to proprogate the “bubbles” along the chevron patterned columns on the substrate. It took a substantial amount of power to generate the rotating magnetic field in the orthogonal coils that encased the substrate. The custom designed coil drivers were supplied by +12V and -12V power supplies. A common failure of these devices was a dead short between the power supplies. Failures were a spectacular occurrence to say the least. At the end, our applications group had developed a bubble memory cartridge and even showed it at a computer show in Chicago. TI got out of the bubble memory business shortly after. I still have my little bubble memory board encased in plastic and even a couple TI bubble memory coffee mugs as momentos of that time.