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Showing posts from February, 2017

The Birth of the Home Video Game Mass Market

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Inside the Telstar. Calculator for Size Comparison The Coleco Telstar was launched in 1976. It played six games, but only three were offered in Coleco's first product. The General Instrument AY-3-8500 was the first single IC to offer multiple games, made available to every manufacturer, launching home video games as a mass market. It marked the end of discrete systems such as the Magnavox x00 products. The Coleco Telstar was a highly integrated system with only a few components for the GI chip. The RF cable/TV Out wrapped round the ferrite core in the photo above was a late addition/modification when Coleco failed its FCC approval. Ralph Baer, who had seen an early demo of the GI chip, and introduced the new General Instrument  IC to Coleco, suggested the addition to suppress EMI. Ed Saks, who was the head of GI had brought the two design guys from GI's Scottish facility to the US to develop the AY-3-8500 fully, and the further chips that came in the following years.

The First Silicon Transistors

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TI 904 Si transistor Texas Instruments introduced the 900 series silicon transistors in 1954, the first silicon transistors in history. The upstart TI of Dallas managed to beat the established East Coast companies to the first silicon products. It was through the hire of important Bell Labs people in the development of silicon that enabled the feat. The higher temperature operation of silicon was preferable over the dominant germanium, so getting Si products into the market would give that company an edge. TI started transistor development in Lemmon Avenue in Dallas and in 1958 moved to a 300 acre site at North Central Expressway. The Semiconductor building was the first building on the campus. The building is still there (although modified) and is now a Raytheon building following the acquisition of TI's defense business in 1997. I visited the facility during the 2000s and you could still see the roots of TI in the fabric of the building. hfe=28, Vf=725mV, low gain but it

Bell Labs Point Contact Transistor

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Western Electric Point Contact Transistor Developed by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at Bell Laboratories, the first transistor was a seminal moment in history. In the main because it was part of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, Bell Labs was very open in its sharing of the invention, including its methods of manufacture. Being a monopoly, AT&T was very aware of anti-trust pressures. Bell Labs shared its knowledge with 40 licensees in 1951. From demonstrations in 1948, a number of companies had already seen the potential impact of the transistor and had started their own developments. Those with most to lose, the vacuum tube manufacturers, were quickest off the mark including Raytheon, the biggest supplier of mini vacuum tubes. Point Contact transistors were difficult to manufacture and their reliability was poor. Superior transistor manufacturing methods developed including grown junction and alloy junction. Western Electric at its Allentown PA facility contin

Grown Junction Transistors

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Western Electric 2N27 Early Transistor To the left is a Western Electric grown junction transistor from the mid 1950s, when full rate production started on the first grown junction transistors. The technology was developed in Bell Labs after the point contact transistor, and was significantly more reliable and manufacturable. William Shockley, later to form Shockley Semiconductors on the West Coast, developed the theory of the grown junction transistor. However they didn't last too long, being pretty much superseded by Alloy Junction transistors. The 2N27, 2N28 and 2N29 were the first grown junction transistors. GE 2N167 Transistor General Electric were also an early developer or grown junction transistor technology. The 2N167 germanium grown junction transistor on the left is from the late 1950s. There is a small slab (or bar) of germanium which has been sliced from a larger grown crystal with impurities added to make the npn type transistor structure. The emitter and

Fairchild Micrologic - The World's First ICs

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Fairchild Micrologic Devices Fairchild introduced the Micrologic standard logic family in 1961. These were the world's first ICs, based on Jean Hoerni's revolutionary planar process which laid the blueprint for all future integrated circuits. There were eventually 25 standard logic RTL (DCTL) ICs. Products in the family included the 900, a buffer, 901, a 3 gate counter adapter, the 902, a flip-flop, 923, a JK flip flop and the 959, a 4bit latch. Above is a  3-input NOR device from the early 60s (uL903) in a metal can, and a later packaged JK flip flop (uL923) in a lower cost epoxy topped package. During the 1960s, Fairchild became the first semiconductor company to establish a lower cost assembly facility in the Far East (Hong Kong). Decapped uL903 Micrologic Device The 3-input NOR from Fairchild became the basic building block of the Apollo guidance computer, designed by MIT and built by Raytheon. It used 5,000 3-input NOR ICs and was the first major application of

IBM Mainframe Logic Cards

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IBM Standard Modular System (SMS) Card The Standard Modular System for mainframes was introduced by IBM in the late 50s for the 7030 Stretch program. The card on the left is an IBM SMS card post 1969 even though the card format had changed with the System/360. This card is from a 2420 tape reader. Tape machines and other peripherals kept the SMS format and the component technology longer. The NPN transistors are date code 1970 but are IBM 030 and 044 transistor models defined in the late 1950s. The IBM chrome coloured module on the right of the card is SLT (Solid Logic Technology) format. Later IBM Format Card Monolithic System Technology (MST) was introduced by IBM in 1968 and first appeared in the System/370. It replaced the earlier discrete transistor and diode logic SLT, SLD and ASLT hybrid logic with monolithic circuits, still on ceramic substrates in the same IBM package format.

IBM Early Transistors

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Early IBM Alloy Junction Transistor This is an IBM germanium transistor from the 1950s, early package style. IBM were very active in the early days of transistor development and manufacturing, creating the world's largest manufacturing capability by the early 1960s. IBM also contracted companies like TI and Raytheon to produce Alloy Junction transistors for its computers. This pnp transistor works, hfe=74, Vbe=0.33V.

Computer Logic Cards

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Germanium Alloy Junction Transistor Card From the Early 60s The 2N404 became the workhorse switching transistor of the computer industry, produced by a number of companies including RCA, GE, TI and Raytheon. Despite advances in silicon, mesa and planar structures, demand for germanium alloy junction transistors continued throughout the 1960s. This card also has eight Hughes Aircraft HG1012 germanium point contact diodes. HG signified Hughes Glenrothes, so these were UK manufactured. Interestingly the site that manufactured these diodes in the 1960s is now a working Raytheon facility.

CBS Hytron Semiconductors

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2N38 Germanium Alloy Junction Transistor from the Early to Mid 50s  CBS purchased vacuum tube manufacturer Hytron (based in Danvers Mass) and established a semiconductor facility in an old mill in Warren St, Lowell in the early 1950s. In 1961 the market consolidated and Raytheon bought the CBS-Hytron semiconductor business around the same time it acquired Rheem Semiconductor. I stayed in Lowell several times on business in a hotel off Warren St, so possibly walked past the old facility several times without knowing it. Lowell is an old mill town with lots of 19th century brick mill buildings.

Manchester "Baby" Computer

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Reconstructed Manchester Baby The Manchester Baby (or Small Scale Experimental Machine) was the world's first stored program computer and was built to demonstrate a CRT development. The CRT screen's phosphor persistence (and charge) was utilised to continuously store, read and rewrite digital information on a grid. The numeric result of the stored computer program would be read out on the bottom line of the output CRT grid in binary. Four CRTs were used for data storage, each with a different function. The CRT developed by Williams and Kilburn would be licensed to IBM for its 701 and 702 computers from 1952 onwards. The IBM 701 used 72 Williams tubes for 1024 bits of storage each. Ferranti MK 1 Logic Element The Ferranti MK 1 was the commercial computer developed from the Manchester Baby (and the subsequent Manchester MK I). It used 1600 x EF50 pentode valves (tubes) and 2000 x thermionic diodes for the logic elements (two logic circuits shown on the left).

Bendix Semiconductor Division

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Bendix Packaged Transistor From the 1960s 2N102A Silicon NPN Bendix, founded in the 1920s (until the 1980s) made automotive products including brake and fuel systems. They also produced aircraft brakes, hydraulics and electric power systems, avionics, radar, radios, televisions and computers. It was also well known for Bendix washing machines, but the name had been licensed. The company was acquired by Allied Signal, and the Comms division based in Towson MD was subsequently acquired by Raytheon. I visited the Raython site a number of years back and saw a Bendix memorial plaque in the lobby. The semiconductor division was based in South St, Holmdel NJ, but was never a major open market player. They appear to have been pioneers in plastic packaged power transistors, there would have been internal demand within Bendix. Not sure exactly when Bendix stopped producing semiconductors but was some time in the 1960s.