Responses inline:
On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, Douglas Quebbeman wrote:
Maybe that is
why I have ended up doing process control work so many times.
Its just fun to turn stuff on and off with the computer, and the bigger the
mess of stuff, the better.
Hey, I used to do distribution centers: sortation conveyors, vertical and
horizontal carousels, pick stations, etc. We used Quatech boards with Opto
22 modules stuffed in IBM PS/2 Model 80s which we stuffed in turn in big
Hoffman cabinets, and, contrary to my specs, unventilated. They ran like
gangbusters!
I've never had a problem with Opto's stuff. Good solid stuff. (I do
concurrent robotics for a living.) Plus Mod80s are built like a brick
shithouse. I once saw one that had been running in an unventilated closet
in someone's office for almost 4 years continuously. Had only been
rebooted a couple of times. Running AIX/2, of all things.
We'd gone in to Rose's Distribution center
down in Raleigh-Duram area,
and found they had to keep a $250,000 inventory of spares *just* for
the custom controllers they used. We figured it would be a lot cheaper
to keep a couple Model 80s and some Quatech I/O boards around.
Sounds reasonable to me.
We were told that if we botched the timing of the
sortation conveyor,
that the whole line could "explode"; the contractor said he'd seen
conveyor rollers embedded in a warehouse ceiling, once...
Lights going on and off, arms swinging lanes shut, packages shuttling
off into other lanes, etc. Some of the most fun I've had in computing!
LOL. That would be a scene 8-) The same kind of thing happens with
robots with screwed up timing.
And all on-topic, as everything described in the list
is > 10years old.
Regards,
-doug q
Peace... Sridhar