The obvious antonym to read-only memory. 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, in 1972, 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%.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {DED}{hacker humor}]