The magnetic drum memory/storage is a fascinating precursor to RAM and hard drives, performing both functions simultaneously. The vacuum tubes only store the next set of processor instructions to be executed
That experience when you start playing around with circuit design and are shocked at just how many transistors it takes to make a simple latch.
Now think about doing that with bulky and hot vacuum tubes and you quickly realize that you can't have any reasonable quantity of RAM without making the computer the size of a room. The vacuum tubes are just your registers and you need to be clever with the memory and storage. This is also why we don't use SRAM very much even today.
Can you imagine what a leap forward Core Memory was at the time? Not having to wait on a spinning drum to get around to reading the memory line you needed is like going from hard drives to SSDs.
Also, if any old timers remember the Story of Mel this is the class of computer Mel was working on.
I think he should also go for the other meaning of "plays doom" and set it up as a sequencer which sends keyboard and mouse inputs, like a 900 pound TASbot.
Yeah I felt like that part was misleading, and undercut how cool of an accomplishment this actually was.
I would also be quicker to accept it if they stated really clearly at the beginning that it actually only plays a song, but it instead left me watching the whole video waiting for them to get to explaining how the got the actual game working.
Sadly there is no chance that machine did anything close to rendering those printouts. The Bendix has about 8kb of memory and no random access storage so rendering even a single room using raycasting (instead of the BSPs that Doom uses) is a stretch, and adding an output routine is just going to blow your memory budget. You can't even use those 8kb of memory like an old microcomputer, it's arranged as 2,200 29 bit words. It might just be possible to have it render a single simple box room using raycasting into some kind of data structure in memory, and then load an output routine from paper tape to print it out, but even that will require the programmer to be very clever.
Does it? I watched this video and the explanation of how they (mostly Bill in Vermont) did it had barely enough room for the song data. I think the line graphics might have been some good story telling
It was likely just a proof of concept run in the emulator. I'd guess it would be wildly impractical to get even that version of doom on real paper tape
Ah yes, and I watched all 29 minutes to find out. It was still very interesting though and I’m still impressed. Not sure what the terminal program they showed at the beginning was, but the thing only “plays doom” (theme song)
Now think about doing that with bulky and hot vacuum tubes and you quickly realize that you can't have any reasonable quantity of RAM without making the computer the size of a room. The vacuum tubes are just your registers and you need to be clever with the memory and storage. This is also why we don't use SRAM very much even today.
Can you imagine what a leap forward Core Memory was at the time? Not having to wait on a spinning drum to get around to reading the memory line you needed is like going from hard drives to SSDs.
Also, if any old timers remember the Story of Mel this is the class of computer Mel was working on.
I would also be quicker to accept it if they stated really clearly at the beginning that it actually only plays a song, but it instead left me watching the whole video waiting for them to get to explaining how the got the actual game working.
Not exactly realtime.
So that's around 20 kilofeet of tape, or 440 miles.