Product Description

The E0227-702-008 is a memory board Opus 5000 from Okuma. This is a bubble memory card which is no longer used in modern computer systems. The bubble memory card is a solid-state, non-volatile memory which was introduced in 1967 by Andrew Bobeck who was at the time working for Bell Telephone Laboratories.

This device makes use of a thin magnetic film of material which holds a number of small magnetized areas together. These small magnetized areas are what is referred to as the bubbles and each bubble has a storage capacity of one bit of data. This data storage had a very promising start in the ’70s and was being manufactured by Sharp, Hitachi, Texas Instruments, Western Electric and Intel in the 1970s’ and into the 1980s. In the 1980’s the demand for hard disk computer storage fell drastically and as such bubble memory no longer could remain competitive on the commercial market.

The E0227-702-008 bubble memory card weights 1 lb. and measures 6 inches by 11 inches by 1 inch. On the interior of this bubble memory card are a number of components that make it work. The exterior is made of two magnetic plates. On the inside, you will find orthogonal coils that are attached to the user system and the bubble chip. The bubble chip features a number of components which make up this part of the bubble memory. Then there is the user system that has the most components and there is also the layer of orthogonal coils which are right below the exterior magnetic plate.

It is important to note that the E0227-702-008 bubble memory card from Okuma is a vintage product that is no longer being manufactured.