Talk:DRTE Computer

correction/clarification - edit

I made a quick edit and forgot to put in my edit comments. The first paragraph read that the current whereabouts of the computer are unknown because the exhibition at the Canada Science and Technology Museum closed. I have edited the sentence to indicate that the computer is still a part of the collection and is housed in a collection storage facility and not in the main museum building.

-- Assistant Curator, Canada Science and Technology Museum — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.195.49.163 (talk) 15:52, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Binary or BCD?

No matter how many IEEE societies you join, you never have access to the paper you want. There's an IEEE publication "Dirty Gertie: the DRTE computer", from IEEE Annals of the History of Computing ( Volume: 16, Issue: 2, Summer 1994 ) , which I can't get, but the abstract says in part "... This computer is of interest because it incorporated several novel concepts, including a new form of transistorized flip-flop, a hardware decimal-to-binary and binary-to-decimal (DBBD) converter and a unique core memory." Doesn't say "binary coded decimal" at all, just "binary". Not all binary values are valid BCD - if you want to load 4 bits of memory, BCD only gets you 0000,0001...1000,1001. Can't do 11XX at all. So I think it's incorrect to say "binary coded decimal" here without a reference. --Wtshymanski (talk) 01:01, 18 January 2018 (UTC)