"Gordon" wrote in
:

You guys watch too many sci-fi flicks. I used to work in a facility
that
bombarded chips and then retested same. The test failures were
discarded and those that passed were considered hardened and were
installed in missles and silos. The greater percentage passed the
tests, therefore your quartz clock would probably survive.
G



I used to work in the Metrology Engineering Center (Code 132) of the
Charleston Naval Shipyard. This astute title got me free engineering
magazines and "stuff" from all over sent to the shop. Someone sent me a
test IC called a "Nuclear Event Detector". What its purpose was was to
detect the EMP BEFORE it could trash the data in the onboard computer of
whatever military machine you were piloting, shutting down the computer
temporarily until the event pulse had passed.

I sat there shaking my head in dismay that there were those who actually
think we could survive one of the major weapons to the point where we'd
need the computer's data.....

I forget who made it....Fairchild, perhaps.

I also was sent the developer's tool kit for the Signetics WOM technology.
WOM - Write Only Memory. The kit came with very professional-looking
documentation, including a graph of filament voltage against filament
current, that dropped, suddenly, as the filament opened around 8V. It also
came with custom Signetics glasses-nose-moustache disguise so you wouldn't
become the brunt of any office jokes while designing with Signetics WOM
technology. The IC pinout was rather simple. Pin 1 was "data in". All
the other pins, except for the filament pins 4 and 5 were NC, not
connected. WOM technology was touted in the literature as a very
successful bit bucket, insignificant bit storage, unused serial port
(obviously it was a serial data device and the literature said so) data
repository and a whole list of humourous uses.

I've often wondered how many WOMs the lesser-educated government
procurement bureaucrats have warehoused in some climate-controlled storage
facility with the Nuclear Event Detectors.....(c;

We could hook the NEDs in between the insignificant bit data stream and the
WOMs to protect them!