[1] Although the performance was quite good, equal to that of contemporary machines like the PDP-1, no commercial vendors ever took up the design, and the only potential sale to the Canadian Navy's Pacific Naval Laboratories, fell through.
Engineers had developed techniques to ensure that the overall circuit was not overly sensitive to these changes so they could be replaced without causing trouble.
DRTE was originally formed to improve communications systems, and to this end, they started a research program into using transistors in complex circuits in a new Electronics Lab under the direction of Norman Moody.
Generally this sort of changing load is something that should be avoided wherever possible to reduce noise generated when the power draw increases or decreases.
Although it appears it was never an official recommendation, by the mid-1950s the DRTE decided that the best way to really develop transistor techniques in a complex system was to build a computer.
With the price of transistors falling all the time, Florida's design included every feature he imagined would be useful in a scientific machine.
Florida had previously worked with the team building the Manchester Mark 1, and following their lead he designed the DRTE machine with 40-bit words.
Florida felt that the three-address instruction format, including the addresses of two parameters and a result, would make programming easier than a register-based system.
Although one solution, commonly used at the time, was to build the core machinery out of tubes, for the DRTE machine this was considered one more challenge in transistor design.
In this system the read wire really did pass through only one set of powered lines, and the problems of the "extra signal" were avoided completely.
I/O device on the DRTE design were extremely limited, consisting of a Flexowriter for output, and a paper tape reader at about 600 CPS for input.
[2] This allowed the paper tape to be punched in decimal codes which would be converted invisibly into binary and stored in memory while being read.
Using the shift key, characters entered into the system represented mnemonics instead of numerical data, which would then be translated differently.
Integer math was likewise improved by about the same factor, although "complex" arithmetic like multiplication remained in code as opposed to hardware.
These included tic-tac-toe and hangman, as well as a simple music generator that could play the Colonel Bogey March by attaching a speaker to a particular flip-flop.
Eventually a site outside Prince Albert, Saskatchewan was selected; it has been suggested this was due to it being Prime Minister's John Diefenbaker home riding.
The machine itself consisted of a non-programmable computer that read the data into 40,000 bits of core memory, tagged it with timecode and other information, and then wrote it to magnetic tape.
The various US agencies that commented on the system were highly sceptical that the DRB could build such a device, but suggested they do so anyway as a backup to their own much simpler design.
While Alouette was being designed, a major question about the lifetime of the solar cells powering the system came to be solved on the DRTE computer.
They developed a program that simulated the effects of precession on the satellite's orbit, and used this information to calculate the percentage of time that sunlight fell on it.
The computer was also put into use generating tracking commands for the receiver dish antenna in Ottawa that downloaded data from Alouette.
The computer produced tapes so the dish would be slowly rotated as it tracked the satellite, thereby guaranteeing no "dead time".