And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
And, all its onboard code was written in custom assembly language, not FORTRAN. That's how it all fit into so small memory, and could do so much with so little resources, and consumed so little power, and still beat all the odds.
A fascinating snip from the Web ... "" There are no microprocessors in the CCS. Rather, the processors are built from discrete 7400-series TTL chips. The machine does not have an operating system but rather runs bare-metal instructions. Both data and instruction words are 18 bits wide, with the instruction words having a 6-bit opcode and a 12-bit address. The 64 instructions contain the usual tools for moving data in and out of registers and doing basic arithmetic, although there are only commands for adding and subtracting, not for multiplication or division. The processors access 4 kilowords of redundant plated-wire memory, which is similar to magnetic core memory in that it records bits as magnetic domains, but with an iron-nickel alloy plated onto the surface of wires rather than ferrite beads. "" -- https://hackaday.com/2024/05/06/the-computers-of-voyager/
And, yes, I'm also running on my original, much older, code. No patches. No upgrades. Ten released versions, all rated 5 stars. Moderately-high maintenance. 😆
Heck, I"M still operating on the original code!
ReplyDeleteyeah right
ReplyDeleteUmm ... That's not a picture of Voyager 1.
ReplyDeleteAnd, all its onboard code was written in custom assembly language, not FORTRAN. That's how it all fit into so small memory, and could do so much with so little resources, and consumed so little power, and still beat all the odds.
A fascinating snip from the Web ...
""
There are no microprocessors in the CCS. Rather, the processors are built from discrete 7400-series TTL chips. The machine does not have an operating system but rather runs bare-metal instructions. Both data and instruction words are 18 bits wide, with the instruction words having a 6-bit opcode and a 12-bit address. The 64 instructions contain the usual tools for moving data in and out of registers and doing basic arithmetic, although there are only commands for adding and subtracting, not for multiplication or division. The processors access 4 kilowords of redundant plated-wire memory, which is similar to magnetic core memory in that it records bits as magnetic domains, but with an iron-nickel alloy plated onto the surface of wires rather than ferrite beads.
""
-- https://hackaday.com/2024/05/06/the-computers-of-voyager/
And, yes, I'm also running on my original, much older, code. No patches. No upgrades. Ten released versions, all rated 5 stars. Moderately-high maintenance. 😆
-- Davis.P