4 Sep
2010
4 Sep
'10
2 p.m.
On 09/04/2010 02:15 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
No but it was possible to use M,K and other sries modules to do it yourself.
As to not common, here (usa) it was, of course it wasn't cheap.
Yes, National instruments, Keithly, Simpson, HP[with options],
Tektronix and a multitude of smaller companies. It was not
uncommon to use a complete 3-5000(US$) instrument
just to test a specialized part because it was flexible or
offered a very high order of resolution and accuracy
(>5digits). Most ADC board were usually 10 to maybe
14 bits when the application needed 20 or more.
You only have to remember that by time the PDT series hit
the 8080/8085/z80/8048/8051/6502/6800 cpus were well
entrenched in the instrumentation market and but needed
a host with more power to do serious data reduction and
PDP11 was a common choice (DG nova.. others) as the
PC was not there yet (or taken seriously).
Allison
PDT-150 is a
bounded system, no internal options to speak of
That's waht I thought.
(assuming full memory and serial option). As is
the PDT130
(TU58 mass storage) and PDT110 (no mass storage).
It has multiple serial ports. A/D, D/A and other general IO can be done
via
serial communications.
It's certainly possible, but it wasn't that common at the time. Did
DEC
make ADC and/or DAC modules with serial interfaces for it? Was there
software to talk to such devices (other than send/receive a string
to/from a seiral port)?
I am wondering how this machine differed in its
'instrumentation'
capabilites from any other machine with a couple of spare serial ports.
How does it jsutify its name?
Packaged software.
I'm sure
if it had a IEE488 bus port you would not have asked the question
Indeed I wouldn't...
but, serial works and there are many instruments
out there that have serial
as an option. I know this as I'd used a Keithly High resolution DMM with
At that time HP were selling ADC, DAC, timing generator, relay, etc
modules with an IEEE-488 interface. The ADC I am refering to is not a
complete DVMor DMM unit, but a simple 11 bit ADC with much the same
capabilities as the one that goes into a MINC-11 Were other companies
selling similar units with RS232 interfaces?