Alan,
All I can say is WOW... That's some serious persiverance and patience to do
that kinda a work. I think I would scream, decide I wasn't getting paid for
this horse droppings and run back to the FPGA a happy man. But
in terms of low tech... I checked with some of the old time IBM process
guys... And they were like "How did you think we made chips?" and the famous
line... "Chuck, you know that we used looms to make memory back in the 60's
don't you?"... Yup that's right... to make memory for your "monster" machines
back then... they used looms to just weave wires with
some ferris "washers" ect to create a memory bank because it just wasn't
worth going through the hassel of making photoresist etched memory chips.
Well, in this case I agree that a low tech society would be stuck with the
photoresist. But right now I can run out and snag an FPGA (assuming
I'm doing a simple enough chip...) relatively "cheaply" for low volume.
High volume on the other hand is another matter... So for a colony looking to
fix some high tech equipment... wouldn't they have a lot of FPGA's kicking
around or equivilients for "hack" repair jobs? you'd think that a decent
colony or even a military troop would have tons of these fpga's or pics or
something equivilent... especially if everything
is computerized. This would allow for a reasonable repair setup that "should"
last a long long time.
Thanks again Alan for explaining... I was foolishly envisioning something far
more simple...
Chuck
From: "Charles N. Choukalos" <chuckc@btv.ibm.com>
> All I can say is WOW... That's some serious persiverance and patience
As I said, the guy whose project this was was a nutter.
> I think I would scream, decide I wasn't getting
It was a labour of love. Which is to say, that after the nth batch with 0%
yield we both said F*&^% this for a joke <g> We did it to see if we could,
basically. A hobby.
> I checked with some of the old time IBM process
And the UYK-7 computer, still to be found in many combat ships, still
uses Core memory. It's very resistant to EMP, doesn't require a refresh (so if
power is lost, you still have the memory as it was at the time), and
degrades gracefully - shoot a bullet through it, and only the bits
actually damaged by the projectile are lost.
Of course, this means a CPU with all the power of a 286 weighs about a
tonne...
you'd be surprised at how primitive some of the "advanced" military
electronics is. That's cause they keep it in service for decades.
> Thanks again Alan for explaining... I was foolishly envisioning
Simple it ain't. But it *is* doable.
Guess I'm showing my age. My father was involved with computing wayyy
On 8-May-00 at 09:50, Alan and Carmel Brain (aebrain@dynamite.com.au)
wrote:
> And the UYK-7 computer, still to be found in many combat ships, still
I have news for those in power in the Navy that have this silly idea that you
can power core memory down and back up. If you use the front switch it is
fine, but if you take an electrical casualty, especially one that kicks the
emergency power on, when that pup comes back up the memory is going to be
slicked. It is much quicker and more reliable to have a PROM with they system
software.
From: "Roger Books" <books@mail.state.fl.us>
> I have news for those in power in the Navy that have this silly idea
Interesting. We have a different experience with our twin-bay AN/UYK-7Bs
on our DDGs (which are basically Block II Charlie Adams with all the
trimmings bar Mk 86 - and we've got that now too. SYS-1 of course rather
than BVP) Or at least we did back in the 80s when I was working on them. At
the CDSC (Combat Data System Centre) we had a whole heap of mains voltage
problems in the mid 80s. When the mains dropped from the 230 standard to below
about 170, the machine went pfut. Similarly
the less common times when it pushed 300. But the re-starts always
On 8-May-00 at 10:18, Alan and Carmel Brain (aebrain@dynamite.com.au)
wrote:
> From: "Roger Books" <books@mail.state.fl.us>
May have been the ship environment versus shore (I'm assuming CDSC was a shore
installation). We always caught the voltage spike from hell every time power
came back on or we switched to the MGs during a drill. It got so bad our CO
ordered the engineering types to give us advanced warning when they were
having a drill so we could take our equipment down.
From: "Roger Books" <books@mail.state.fl.us>
> May have been the ship environment versus shore (I'm assuming CDSC was
Possible - the 115v on the DDGs was always better conditioned though.
Certainly I'd prefer a UYK-43 to a 7 any day.