1. <jargon, humour> (WOM) The obvious antonym to "read-only
memory" (ROM).
Out of frustration with the long and seemingly useless chain
of approvals required of component specifications, during
which no actual checking seemed to occur, an engineer at
Signetics once created a specification for a write-only memory
and included it with a bunch of other specifications to be
approved. This inclusion came to the attention of Signetics
management only when regular customers started calling and
asking for pricing information. Signetics published a
corrected edition of the data book and requested the return of
the "erroneous" ones. Later, around 1974, Signetics bought a
double-page spread in "Electronics" magazine's April issue and
used the spec as an April Fools' Day joke. Instead of the
more conventional characteristic curves, the 25120 "fully
encoded, 9046 x N, Random Access, write-only-memory" data
sheet included diagrams of "bit capacity vs. Temp.", "Iff
vs. Vff", "Number of pins remaining vs. number of socket
insertions", and "AQL vs. selling price". The 25120 required
a 6.3 VAC VFF supply, a +10V VCC, and VDD of 0V, +/- 2%.
2. bit bucket.
[Jargon File]
Nearby terms:
Write-Once Read-Many « write-only code « write-only language « write-only memory » write-through » write-thru » writing system
