Components

write-only memory

The obvious antonym to read-only memory. Out of frustration with the long and seemingly useless chain of approvals required of component specifications, during which no actual checking seemed to occur, an engineer at Signetics once created a specification for a write-only memory and included it with a bunch of other specifications to be approved. This inclusion came to the attention of Signetics {management} only when regular customers started calling and asking for pricing information. Signetics published a corrected edition of the data book and requested the return of the `erroneous' ones. Later, in 1972, Signetics bought a double-page spread in Electronics magazine's April issue and used the spec as an April Fools' Day joke. Instead of the more conventional characteristic curves, the 25120 "fully encoded, 9046 x N, Random Access, write-only-memory" data sheet included diagrams of "bit capacity vs.: Temp.", "Iff vs. Vff", "Number of pins remaining vs.: number of socket insertions", and "AQL vs.: selling price". The 25120 required a 6.3 VAC VFF supply, a +10V VCC, and VDD of 0V, ±2%.

DED

Dark-Emitting Diode (that is, a burned-out LED). Compare {SED}, {LER}, {write-only memory}. In the early 1970s both Signetics and Texas instruments released DED spec sheets as {AFJ}s (suggested uses included "as a power-off indicator").

virtual

[via the technical term virtual memory, prob.: from the term virtual image in optics]

Common alternative to {logical}; often used to refer to the artificial objects (like addressable virtual memory larger than physical memory) simulated by a computer system as a convenient way to manage access to shared resources.
Simulated; performing the functions of something that isn't really there. An imaginative child's doll may be a virtual playmate. Oppose {real}.

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Marcadores: Common, Components, Computer, Hardware, Memory, Optics

# 5/20/2009 01:30:00 AM, Comentários, Links para esta postagem,