------ Original Message ------
From: "Steve Malikoff via cctalk" <cctalk@classiccmp.org>
To: cctalk@classiccmp.org
Sent: Friday, 16 Oct, 2020 At 08:02
Subject: Control Data 449 Special Miniature Computer from 1967?
I was idly browsing early editions of Computer World journal on Google
newspapers and found an announcement
and picture of the '449', an experimental aerospace computer built by
Control Data in 1967 and touted as
"the world's smallest computer" at 4" x 4" x 9", of which the logic part
is a 4" cube and the rest is the battery.
It's on page 3 of Computer World Sep 20 1967:
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=v_xunPV0uK0C&dat=19670920&printsec=frontpage&hl=en
<https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=v_xunPV0uK0C&dat=19670920&printsec=frontpage&hl=en>
It seems to me it may have been an analogous machine to the Apollo AGS
perhaps and would like to know a bit more
about it, but I've only been able to find a brief mention of the '449-2
Special Miniature Computer' and
that's it. Archive.org hasn't turned up anything. I'm just curious about
the tech used, no doubt it used DIPs
or flatpack micrologic and a tiny core plane?
Steve.
The only source i can see shows that prototypes were shipped to the US
Military. I imagine, from the pretty limited instruction set shown on
the article you linked, that it was primarily used for ballistics
calculations for, say, missiles or mortars. Being what i assume was a
military contract, i don't imagine many of these prototypes were made,
and details would be classified.
With the technology of the time, I can't imagine it had much memory even
compared to other small machines like the PDP-8 and AGC. The limited
instruction set would help keep the physical size down, but also limit
it's usefulness in general applications.
I'd suspect it was TTL based, like other (very) late 60's machines, with
a very limited amount of core memory.
https://insight.ieeeusa.org/articles/your-engineering-heritage-what-is-a-minicomputer/
