Talk:Ferranti Mark 1

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As an undergraduate, I spent one summer as a maintenance technician on the FERUT computer and learned programming from Christopher Strachey. My memory of the machine was that its Williams Tube memories had 64 64-bit words, arranged in blocks of 8 x 8 bits, with a parity bit row to the right and above the actual memory bits, making a 65 x 65 bit pattern. Strachey programmed the index register on the console (a similar Williams tube) to visually represent a checkers board, and programmed the machine to play against a human opponent who entered moves on the teletype. (I'm not putting this in the main page, because it relies on my memory rather than on documented evidence)Mmt (talk) 17:26, 8 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

first?[edit]

I noticed that it points out it was before the UNIVAC, but I don't know why that's so important here. It was after the ENIAC, so why is this so crucial? And if you point out what was after it, shouldn't you point out what preceded it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.189.126.69 (talk) 17:03, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

instruction represented by a single character?[edit]

There are some statements in the article, which, IMHO, are contradicting:

  • The Mark 1 used a 20-bit word
  • Instructions were stored in a single word (__how many?__)
  • There were about fifty instructions in total
  • the characters representing the values from 0–31 (five-bit numbers)
  • Each instruction was represented by a single character

Now, if there were about 50 instructions in total, then how could they be represented by a single character? (ie. one of 32 possible values)?

It makes no sense.

Even if in a single word (20 bits) there would be two instructions stored, it would make 10 bits per instruction used, ie, __two__ 5-bit blocks or characters. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Klenot (talk • contribs) 06:22, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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