My boss used to work for a building automation company. Their original product was based around the C64. They had them installed in buildings for years and years... the program was on a cartridge so with no moving parts there was little to go wrong. It took a lot of convincing to get their customers to update to something newer in the early 2000s. -J On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 1:44 PM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
http://hothardware.com/news/battered-but-not-beaten-commodore-c64-survives-o...
-- Jason Perkins 313 355 0085
On 09/28/2016 01:46 PM, Jason Perkins via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
My boss used to work for a building automation company. Their original product was based around the C64. They had them installed in buildings for years and years... the program was on a cartridge so with no moving parts there was little to go wrong. It took a lot of convincing to get their customers to update to something newer in the early 2000s.
It's certainly understanding that they'd take some convincing. Why would they want to change? Don't fix it if it ain't broke. The industrial landscape is littered with stories about how a fully-functioning, simple, easily-maintainable system is replaced by something "new" which is supposed to be "better" (but they can rarely tell you how), is inevitably PC-based, and turns out to be an utter pile of crap. Care to place some bets on the longevity of the "newer" system as compared to the system it replaced? -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
Sure, we're still running it today.... it's hosted on an AMD Pentium class machine running Windows NT4 Embedded, and a Java based enviroment called Tridium. The problems we run into now are with everything around the sytem... the configuration software only works with Microsoft's Java VM, so that means XP with no service packs installed. The system runs a network called LONWorks. The controller boards in the air handlers and roof top units were designed by the company, who has since discontinued them, so spares of those are very hard to come by. Our main unit is the JACE NP, we also have two JACE-5 devices, controlling one wing of the building and the irrigation system. http://198.65.3.172/moreniagara.htm The system has some nice displays: https://www.dropbox.com/s/okmztauso1f1nez/BAS_Main.JPG?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/8fy6u8o4a8m10be/BAS_ZoneB_AHU.JPG?dl=0 -J On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 1:51 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On 09/28/2016 01:46 PM, Jason Perkins via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
My boss used to work for a building automation company. Their original product was based around the C64. They had them installed in buildings for years and years... the program was on a cartridge so with no moving parts there was little to go wrong. It took a lot of convincing to get their customers to update to something newer in the early 2000s.
It's certainly understanding that they'd take some convincing. Why would they want to change? Don't fix it if it ain't broke. The industrial landscape is littered with stories about how a fully-functioning, simple, easily-maintainable system is replaced by something "new" which is supposed to be "better" (but they can rarely tell you how), is inevitably PC-based, and turns out to be an utter pile of crap.
Care to place some bets on the longevity of the "newer" system as compared to the system it replaced?
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
-- Jason Perkins 313 355 0085
Oh my, those are some very nice displays, perhaps I spoke too soon. As a frequent developer of systems for mission-critical applications, though, I find the idea of a simple 8-bit system with code in ROM a whole lot more appealing than anything with a huge OS and an active filesystem volume. And anything Windows-related would be right out from the get-go. But wow, those displays are very nicely done! -Dave On 09/28/2016 02:07 PM, Jason Perkins via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Sure, we're still running it today.... it's hosted on an AMD Pentium class machine running Windows NT4 Embedded, and a Java based enviroment called Tridium. The problems we run into now are with everything around the sytem... the configuration software only works with Microsoft's Java VM, so that means XP with no service packs installed. The system runs a network called LONWorks. The controller boards in the air handlers and roof top units were designed by the company, who has since discontinued them, so spares of those are very hard to come by.
Our main unit is the JACE NP, we also have two JACE-5 devices, controlling one wing of the building and the irrigation system.
http://198.65.3.172/moreniagara.htm
The system has some nice displays:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/okmztauso1f1nez/BAS_Main.JPG?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8fy6u8o4a8m10be/BAS_ZoneB_AHU.JPG?dl=0
-J
On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 1:51 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On 09/28/2016 01:46 PM, Jason Perkins via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
My boss used to work for a building automation company. Their original product was based around the C64. They had them installed in buildings for years and years... the program was on a cartridge so with no moving parts there was little to go wrong. It took a lot of convincing to get their customers to update to something newer in the early 2000s.
It's certainly understanding that they'd take some convincing. Why would they want to change? Don't fix it if it ain't broke. The industrial landscape is littered with stories about how a fully-functioning, simple, easily-maintainable system is replaced by something "new" which is supposed to be "better" (but they can rarely tell you how), is inevitably PC-based, and turns out to be an utter pile of crap.
Care to place some bets on the longevity of the "newer" system as compared to the system it replaced?
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
It's amusing to consider NT4e "huge", the whole thing runs off of an 8gb IDE hard drive, with 2 2gb FAT partitions. The whole thing takes up only 700mb, 8mb of which is the configuration and logging database. But... compared to 100s of KB in a C64 it is much more overhead :) -J On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 2:16 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Oh my, those are some very nice displays, perhaps I spoke too soon.
As a frequent developer of systems for mission-critical applications, though, I find the idea of a simple 8-bit system with code in ROM a whole lot more appealing than anything with a huge OS and an active filesystem volume. And anything Windows-related would be right out from the get-go.
But wow, those displays are very nicely done!
-Dave
On 09/28/2016 02:07 PM, Jason Perkins via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Sure, we're still running it today.... it's hosted on an AMD Pentium class machine running Windows NT4 Embedded, and a Java based enviroment called Tridium. The problems we run into now are with everything around the sytem... the configuration software only works with Microsoft's Java VM, so that means XP with no service packs installed. The system runs a network called LONWorks. The controller boards in the air handlers and roof top units were designed by the company, who has since discontinued them, so spares of those are very hard to come by.
Our main unit is the JACE NP, we also have two JACE-5 devices, controlling one wing of the building and the irrigation system.
http://198.65.3.172/moreniagara.htm
The system has some nice displays:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/okmztauso1f1nez/BAS_Main.JPG?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8fy6u8o4a8m10be/BAS_ZoneB_AHU.JPG?dl=0
-J
On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 1:51 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On 09/28/2016 01:46 PM, Jason Perkins via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
My boss used to work for a building automation company. Their original product was based around the C64. They had them installed in buildings for years and years... the program was on a cartridge so with no moving parts there was little to go wrong. It took a lot of convincing to get their customers to update to something newer in the early 2000s.
It's certainly understanding that they'd take some convincing. Why would they want to change? Don't fix it if it ain't broke. The industrial landscape is littered with stories about how a fully-functioning, simple, easily-maintainable system is replaced by something "new" which is supposed to be "better" (but they can rarely tell you how), is inevitably PC-based, and turns out to be an utter pile of crap.
Care to place some bets on the longevity of the "newer" system as compared to the system it replaced?
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
-- Jason Perkins 313 355 0085
On Sep 28, 2016, at 2:40 PM, Jason Perkins via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
It's amusing to consider NT4e "huge", the whole thing runs off of an 8gb IDE hard drive, with 2 2gb FAT partitions. The whole thing takes up only 700mb, 8mb of which is the configuration and logging database. But... compared to 100s of KB in a C64 it is much more overhead :)
Most hardware I'd design to run something like this WITHOUT those displays would clock in at less than a megabyte. WITH the displays, you should be able to fit something like that on maybe an 8 MB CompactFlash drive. I'd personally be nervous in an industrial setting about anything with a spinning disk, and if it's going to live a long time, any flash-based media better be copyable as well. Logging is separate, but even then you should be able to do that over a network with e.g. syslog or a close analog. All the same, though, that's a neat looking system. It's just that using Windows NT to run an environmental control system makes me shudder about as much as the people these days trying to use Raspberry Pis to make simple microcontroller stuff (interface converters, timers, etc.). But, as always, time to market and the availability of good engineering resources tends to be the constraint. In the startup I co-founded, my business partner ended up telling me to stop writing things so close to the metal because no one else could handle it (I doubt anyone on this list would have had much trouble). - Dave
On 09/28/2016 02:40 PM, Jason Perkins via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
It's amusing to consider NT4e "huge", the whole thing runs off of an 8gb IDE hard drive, with 2 2gb FAT partitions. The whole thing takes up only 700mb, 8mb of which is the configuration and logging database. But... compared to 100s of KB in a C64 it is much more overhead :)
It's all relative. I work with embedded systems with no mass storage, but a full IP stack and cellular communications, along with sensor I/O and data acquisition/reduction, with a less than 120KB code footprint. Controlling an HVAC system (for example) doesn't really involve much more than that. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On Sep 29, 2016, at 1:47 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On 09/28/2016 02:40 PM, Jason Perkins via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
It's amusing to consider NT4e "huge", the whole thing runs off of an 8gb IDE hard drive, with 2 2gb FAT partitions. The whole thing takes up only 700mb, 8mb of which is the configuration and logging database. But... compared to 100s of KB in a C64 it is much more overhead :)
It's all relative. I work with embedded systems with no mass storage, but a full IP stack and cellular communications, along with sensor I/O and data acquisition/reduction, with a less than 120KB code footprint. Controlling an HVAC system (for example) doesn't really involve much more than that.
A fun followup to this thread: http://www.geek.com/news/commodore-amiga-computer-has-been-running-the-achea... Of course, an Amiga 2000 is a significantly bigger beast than a C64, but somewhat smaller than an NT4 box with a multi-GB hard drive. The article, of course, does highlight the major problem with such systems that usually are the main thing that lead to their replacement: maintenance (which is why my old company ended up making a Core2 Duo real-time NI system to replace a steel mill's old Multibus-based controller; the system worked, but was dying, and spares were becoming nearly impossible to find even on eBay). - Dave
Hey Doug! Thanks for sharing! I love to hear about how vintage systems are still working and reliable! I tell visitors at the museum how there are still systems running COBOL and the reason is that they they are reliable and all the bugs have been worked out of them. Why introduce something new where you have to start all over? I have to act like Evan now and point out that the article has some inaccuracies. It looks like the writer just did a google search to find their information. The C64 was demonstrated in January 1982, but released to the public in August 1982. Also I believe there were at lest five revisions of the motherboard, I see a REV-E on the later models. Also it said the operating system was Commodore BASIC 2.0 GEOS. BASIC and GEOS are two separate things. I think they mean GEOS 2.0. But anyway. So happy to see the C-64 in the news and an unusual use for it! :) On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 1:44 PM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
http://hothardware.com/news/battered-but-not-beaten- commodore-c64-survives-over-25-years-balancing-drive- shafts-in-auto-repair-shop
-- Jeff Brace - ark72axow@gmail.com
That is a lot of mistakes. I glossed right over them. Thought maybe I check up on it and see if the whole thing was a fabrication. It is posted as reported here: https://www.facebook.com/RetrokompLoaderror/ Can't read the foreign language but it is in line with all the other retro club stream of posts. On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 2:26 PM, Jeffrey Brace <ark72axow@gmail.com> wrote:
Hey Doug!
Thanks for sharing! I love to hear about how vintage systems are still working and reliable! I tell visitors at the museum how there are still systems running COBOL and the reason is that they they are reliable and all the bugs have been worked out of them. Why introduce something new where you have to start all over?
I have to act like Evan now and point out that the article has some inaccuracies. It looks like the writer just did a google search to find their information. The C64 was demonstrated in January 1982, but released to the public in August 1982. Also I believe there were at lest five revisions of the motherboard, I see a REV-E on the later models. Also it said the operating system was Commodore BASIC 2.0 GEOS. BASIC and GEOS are two separate things. I think they mean GEOS 2.0.
But anyway. So happy to see the C-64 in the news and an unusual use for it! :)
On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 1:44 PM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
http://hothardware.com/news/battered-but-not-beaten-commodor e-c64-survives-over-25-years-balancing-drive-shafts-in-auto-repair-shop
-- Jeff Brace - ark72axow@gmail.com
If it is in Polish, then Amiga Bill might be able to decipher. On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 2:38 PM, Douglas Crawford <touchetek@gmail.com> wrote:
That is a lot of mistakes. I glossed right over them. Thought maybe I check up on it and see if the whole thing was a fabrication. It is posted as reported here: https://www.facebook.com/ RetrokompLoaderror/ Can't read the foreign language but it is in line with all the other retro club stream of posts.
On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 2:26 PM, Jeffrey Brace <ark72axow@gmail.com> wrote:
Hey Doug!
Thanks for sharing! I love to hear about how vintage systems are still working and reliable! I tell visitors at the museum how there are still systems running COBOL and the reason is that they they are reliable and all the bugs have been worked out of them. Why introduce something new where you have to start all over?
I have to act like Evan now and point out that the article has some inaccuracies. It looks like the writer just did a google search to find their information. The C64 was demonstrated in January 1982, but released to the public in August 1982. Also I believe there were at lest five revisions of the motherboard, I see a REV-E on the later models. Also it said the operating system was Commodore BASIC 2.0 GEOS. BASIC and GEOS are two separate things. I think they mean GEOS 2.0.
But anyway. So happy to see the C-64 in the news and an unusual use for it! :)
On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 1:44 PM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
http://hothardware.com/news/battered-but-not-beaten-commodor e-c64-survives-over-25-years-balancing-drive-shafts-in-auto-repair-shop
-- Jeff Brace - ark72axow@gmail.com
-- Jeff Brace - ark72axow@gmail.com
Good point! Guru Bill? On Thu, Sep 29, 2016 at 4:06 AM, Jeffrey Brace <ark72axow@gmail.com> wrote:
If it is in Polish, then Amiga Bill might be able to decipher.
On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 2:38 PM, Douglas Crawford <touchetek@gmail.com> wrote:
That is a lot of mistakes. I glossed right over them. Thought maybe I check up on it and see if the whole thing was a fabrication. It is posted as reported here: https://www.facebook.com/Retro kompLoaderror/ Can't read the foreign language but it is in line with all the other retro club stream of posts.
On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 2:26 PM, Jeffrey Brace <ark72axow@gmail.com> wrote:
Hey Doug!
Thanks for sharing! I love to hear about how vintage systems are still working and reliable! I tell visitors at the museum how there are still systems running COBOL and the reason is that they they are reliable and all the bugs have been worked out of them. Why introduce something new where you have to start all over?
I have to act like Evan now and point out that the article has some inaccuracies. It looks like the writer just did a google search to find their information. The C64 was demonstrated in January 1982, but released to the public in August 1982. Also I believe there were at lest five revisions of the motherboard, I see a REV-E on the later models. Also it said the operating system was Commodore BASIC 2.0 GEOS. BASIC and GEOS are two separate things. I think they mean GEOS 2.0.
But anyway. So happy to see the C-64 in the news and an unusual use for it! :)
On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 1:44 PM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
http://hothardware.com/news/battered-but-not-beaten-commodor e-c64-survives-over-25-years-balancing-drive-shafts-in-auto-repair-shop
-- Jeff Brace - ark72axow@gmail.com
-- Jeff Brace - ark72axow@gmail.com
participants (5)
-
Dave McGuire -
David Riley -
Douglas Crawford -
Jason Perkins -
Jeffrey Brace