| ▲ | Retro_Dev 2 hours ago | |
No questions, but I really enjoyed the article - thank you for sharing. It amazes me how few vacuum tubes these early computers use, compared to the billions and trillions of mosfet transistors used in modern devices. | ||
| ▲ | rahen 34 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | |
The Gamma 3, which competed with the 604, only had about 400 tubes as far as I remember: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bull_Gamma_3 Both the 604 and the G3 were bit serial to save components. | ||
| ▲ | kens 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
One way they get away with using relatively few tubes is that most of the Boolean logic is done with semiconductor (germanium) diodes, using tubes to amplify the results. | ||
| ▲ | userbinator an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | |
The 604 isn't really a "computer", but more like an ALU hardwired to some I/O. | ||