Jeff Moser, in Computing History Matters, said ‘I had always assumed that the “core” referred to in the error message was an adjective for “main,” but when I saw real “core memory,” I realized that I had misunderstood the term for years.’ It’s an interesting overview; you should check it out.
However, that particular comment reminded me of yet more stuff piled in the closet (sigh)…
The image links to a photo set showing the details of a memory board from an PDP-8e, a 12-bit minicomputer, I once worked on. I rescued this card and the front panel when the system was scrapped. The card contains 4K words (12 bits each) of memory. I’m not sure if any extra bits were included for error correction, and I’m not gonna count all the little donuts to find out.
