Comments on: Watch the Blinking Lights http://www.ffpblog.com/2007/09/watch-the-blinking-lights/ The Journal of a Combat Medic Fri, 09 Dec 2011 19:23:32 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: rompers http://www.ffpblog.com/2007/09/watch-the-blinking-lights/#comment-281 rompers Wed, 05 Sep 2007 21:50:38 +0000 http://www.ffpblog.com/wp/?p=197#comment-281 <p>What do they mean that “That is because the ageing probes can only chat at a sluggish 32 bits a second, far too slow for modern computers.” A computer can go as slow as you want it to. I think what they mean is that it is too hard to buy off-the-shelf equipment to maintain these things, and they don’t want to spend the effort/time/MONEY to replace rooms of rack mounted boards discrete parts with a couple custom built card.  I have seen situations were entire rooms of equipment from the the 70’s/80’s can be replaced by a single PC.  You can buy off-the-self programable development boards and cobble on a few parts to interface to your irreplacable parts such as the antenna.  We do that sort of stuff all the time.  </p> <p>These days they have completely emulated old DEC and CDC machines that will run on single PC.  They will even convert the hardware commands to something modern hardware can tolerate. </p> What do they mean that “That is because the ageing probes can only chat at a sluggish 32 bits a second, far too slow for modern computers.” A computer can go as slow as you want it to. I think what they mean is that it is too hard to buy off-the-shelf equipment to maintain these things, and they don’t want to spend the effort/time/MONEY to replace rooms of rack mounted boards discrete parts with a couple custom built card.  I have seen situations were entire rooms of equipment from the the 70’s/80’s can be replaced by a single PC.  You can buy off-the-self programable development boards and cobble on a few parts to interface to your irreplacable parts such as the antenna.  We do that sort of stuff all the time. 

These days they have completely emulated old DEC and CDC machines that will run on single PC.  They will even convert the hardware commands to something modern hardware can tolerate.

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