MUSASINO-1

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The MUSASINO-1 was the second electronic computer built in Japan. Construction started in Musashino, Tokyo in 1952 and was completed in July 1957. It was used until July 1962. It was basically compatible with the ILLIAC I. It used 519 vacuum tubes and 5400 parametrons. It had a magnetic core memory, initially of 32 words and later expanded to 256 words. A word was comprised of 40 bits, and two instructions could be stored in a word. Its addition time was 1350 microseconds, the multiplication time was 6800 microseconds, and the division time was 26.1 milliseconds. (The external link below gives shorter times for these operations.)

The MUSASINOs instruction set was a superset of the ILLIACs instruction, so it could generally use its software. However, many of the programs for the ILLIAC used some of the unused bits in the instructions to store data, and these would be interpreted as a different instruction by the MUSASINO.

References:

  • The First Computers: History and Architectures, edited by Raúl Rojas and Ulf Hashagen, 2000, MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-18197-5.

External links: Brief description of the MUSASINO-1

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