At 03:48 PM 1/9/99 -0600, Doug Yowza wrote: Well, I am. That's part of my job experience -building/maintaining industrial controls. Allison has experience in this too from what I recall Clean up that mess. I'm not sure so far but I think that battery juice is a bit toxic. Be careful nevertheless. What kind of manufacturer names are on this thing? Not really stupid in this case; you're just new to it. :) There are third-party GUI's possibly available for QNX but they are costly. Wonderware's and Intellution's interfaces are around US$2k minimum for example. There may be others cheaper nowadays. These GUIs are typically refered to in the industry as Man-Machine Interface or MMI. QNX is a small realtime OS for control systems. Applications are nearly always handwritten for each installation often using a third-party supplied MMI, etc. No typical desktop apps available for QNX as far as I know. I know little about QNX and my books and catalogs are still packed in boxes after my untimely "downsizing" last year. The industrial environment is quite tough for electronics. Depending on the factory/machine/process, much muck could be drawn into an electronics enclosure by air circulation. In machine shops as an example, tool coolants which are sprayed onto the workpiece and tool are found in the air as an aerosol mist. The aerosol is pulled into a cabinet by the fan and collects on everything. Over time there is a coating of condensed coolant which collects dust and other garbage and prevents proper cooling of critical components. I worked on a 1978 vintage 6800-based CNC controller (not 68k, but Moto's 6800 :) which had this cooling arrangement. After about 12 years I found a 1 mm thick coating of sticky coolant glop coating most everything that was not even close to the airstream of the cabinet cooling fan. Poor idea. A standard PC used in most machine shops is even asking for trouble after a period of time. Sealed Boxes Are Good. Cooling is achieved by thermal exchange between the outer surface of the enclosure and the surrounding atmosphere. Fans inside the box ensure the air is mixed to maintain contact with the inner surface and to prevent "hot spots". On systems which had to have a LOT of electronics, especially high power motor drives and a CRT display, etc. a refrigerated heat exchanger system was hung on the outside of the cabinet with its cooling surface stuck inside the enclosure. Another lower cost, simpler way is to use the venturi-effect which uses filtered compressed air blown through a venturi thus cooling the air and pressurizing the control cabinet. Air was exhausted _out_ of the controls because of the positive pressure inside. Really old machines actually had a small air conditioner placed inside the cabinet. Usually when I built control systems I made sure I could get as much surface area as possible exposed to the outside world. I used cabinets somewhat larger than needed, air moving within, free space around exterior and absolutely no open apperatures to let junk in. Insides were kept clean with fewer electronic failures. Some non-industrial computers that have no fans, especially lo-cost mass-market types, probably had their cases made such that free flow of air around the exterior would help cool things off without relying solely on their vent holes and slots. Hard to tell without knowing something about the software written for the thing. Of course, it is not hung on the original machine at this time so there could be some sort of interconnection which would keep the controller running. Though the display blanks this could be related to a feature in just the display panel, not so much the controller. I feel the CPU is halted early on as there are no periferals to be found, so the OS hangs thus not keeping the display 'alive'. 24/7 is the norm for most industrial systems. The power switch for this machine was likely the big disconnect switch on either the machine or the wall from which the AC power was run to from an overhead busbar. You never shut it off unless there was an extended plant shutdown (long vacations) or machine repairs. I haven't got Netscrape back up yet because of a disaster with windoze95 (GRRRR! Don't get me started on this damned OS which cannot handle system problems correctly. The crash was incredibly uncalled for and troublesome. Grrrr.....) but I would suggest searching for a QNX website yourself. They could have some bits of info for you to pick out. Otherwise, as an "unlicensed end user", you may not get any direct help from them. They will likely send you to a local sales rep. Depending upon how sympathetic he/she is to you being a collector type you _might_ get a little assistance or even a few bits of documentation. Good luck. -- Chris -- -- Christian Fandt, Electronic/Electrical Historian Jamestown, NY USA cfandt(a)netsync.net Member of Antique Wireless Association URL: http://www.ggw.org/freenet/a/awa/