SMS Data Gathering App Announcement

[Jay Jaeger]

On 5/20/2020 9:27 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
> On 05/20/2020 09:21 PM, Jay Jaeger via cctech wrote:
> WOW, what a huge effort!

It has definitely been time consuming.  ;)

>> I also spent quite a bit of time generalizing it, so that it will
>> hopefully be usable (perhaps with some more fixes / enhancements /
>> generalizing for most any SMS machine (IBM 1620, IBM 709x, IBM 1401 etc.
>> etc. etc.)
>>
>>
> Umm, if it can take ALDs, then (maybe with some tweaking) it ought to be
> able to do the
> same for SLT and MST machines, too!  That might get a few more people
> interested in the
> concept.
> 
> Jon

I doubt it would be easy based on a quick look at an 1130 (1131-C) ALD.

Some of the things I see:

The card location chart is a lot different - how card slots are
identified is different - the packaging is different.

Pin names - while the database doesn't care, the application sort of
presumes pin names with single or maybe two letters, but the SLT ones
seem to be 3 characters (a letter and two digits).  This might not be
toooooo hard to deal with.

ALD grid layout.  The SMS is a 5 x 8 grid. The SLT one is (at least) 7 x
13.  This would affect a couple of the dialogs in a major way (plus the
grid coordinates themselves.  It would need to be scrollable and have a
more complex coodinate system.

Card slot identification is different.

The SLT drawings have little triangles on the inputs and outputs in some
cases, which I suspect are for inverting inputs and outputs.  The SMS
application has sort of a notion of an inverted output, but not inputs.

SMS drawings always have logic blocks of the same size (but sometimes
with an extension to another block below it.)  The SLT for the 1130 at
least has some double and triple sized blocks.

At least the way signals enter and leave sheets is more or less the
same.  ;)  (Had to find one positive thing, ya know. )

Page nomenclature is very different, but in most places the app just
treats it as a plain old string.  (11.10.20.1 vs KG111 for example).  So
"that's another thing we've got" to borrow from a popular song with a twist.

There are probably fields that would need to be added to capture more
sophisticated logic block information.

I'd have to read a manual on SLT ALDs and packaging to really know what
other issues there might be (and I am sure there are plenty), but I
expect it would not be easy to do.

Of one thing I am certain:  I am not personally going to tackle that.  ;)

JRJ