How much RAM is 64K 36bit words of Core Memory 786

You are, of course, technically correct, and I note that you used "implies" so you obviously know this.

But as a side comment for the OP, the term "core" became rather synonomis with "memory," especially by old fogies like me.

And even as recently as a few months ago, I had to explain to a new (as in "very young") guy what the heck "core" meant in the comments of some UNIX internals code. Yes, we've reached the point where the term means nothing more than "Center of an apple?" to some Computer Science graduates.

I recall an example where the boss had worked out a way to save three bits per record involving a devious XOR and flag operation. It was end intensive, and increased the size of the program by 2%, and reduced the space for data records accordingly, but overall it let us get several hundred more records into the memory of the machine without the customer having to spring for the next system up the line.

We sometimes still pull tricks like this on imbedded uPs, especially when they're program-memory generous and data memory stingy.

- Bill

PS: Nice summary, by the way. Brought back some sweet memories.