🚀 go-pugleaf

didi wrote:
> 
> On Mar 16, 6:24 pm, "Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terr...@earthlink.net>
> wrote:
> > ....
> >    The cheap bastard who ran that CATV system was too cheap to spend $8
> > each for new 8" floppies.  He put it off for a couple months, till both
> > the main disk drive lost the heads when they welded to the worn media,
> > but the backup disk in the secondary drive had crashed.  I spent almost
> > a week piecing the system configuration back together from almost 100
> > bad disks.
> 
> Whoa, that beats my 8" floppy disk adventures. Back in the day - on
> that
> first 6809/00 based thing I had built - I had two such drives,
> Bulgarian
> clones of some Shugart original, I believe. They failed frequently
> enough to teach me that I needed one disk and *two* backups minimum
> (after I had the situation you describe, work disk failure and bad
> backup). I had learned where around the head to press with fingers
> etc. during retries, it was the nightmare you probably know all too
> well.


   This had the original Shugart 8" drives, but the replacements were a
newer model, and every time one went bad we had to reconfigure the
replacement, since SMS did a sloppy design.  The two drives & controller
boards filled a 120 pound rackmount package that appeared to have been a
desktop word processor or typesetting system.  Metrodata designed a
Exorcisor buss interface card to connect it ti the proprietary SMS
interface.
> 
> >    I am not surprised that a 6800 family computer is still working.
> 
> I retired the real thing not so long ago, 2-3 years ago IIRC (when
> I found the month to write the emulator). Not bad for a 6809
> oldie I had built in 1988 as an update to my first thing which
> predated that by perhaps 3-4 years.
> 
> >    Some of the last embedded systems I worked on used the MC68340, and I
> > hated the early production with the PGA package.  The SMD version was a
> > ot easier to troubleshoot, and modify for special products.  BTW, one of
> > those boards is part of the KU band communication systems aboard the
> > ISS.
> 
> I started with the SMD one, designed it into my first "nukeman" in
> 1993/4.
> But mine did not make it to the ISS, just a few sold units.
> Was a nice CPU in its day, still in production, BTW. I have replaced
> it with PPC processors some years back (around 2000), though.


   The original embedded controller was designed for the Microdyne 700 &
1620/1670 series of Telemetry receivers.  It was modified for limited
production Sat antenna controller for NAsA tracking stations.  The one
aboard the ISS was in a 700 series receiver.

   BTW, SMS was 'Scientific Memory Systems'

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