From: "Frank Q" 
To: 
Reply-To: "Frank Q" 


Hi All

Actually I was thinking of:

=> a CMOS system that consumes minimal power (about 500mW)
for one of many examples, check out
http://www.zionnationalpark.com/prism/versaloop.htm


=> Car batteries for power (multiple old ones with power steering diodes)

=> No operating system - just your control program

Cheers
FQ

>
> >With today's modern processors, does anyone really have to worry about
> >speed?
> >And memory is also inexpensive, so why worry about squeezing the most
from
> >your EEPROMS?
>
> Well, if you are trying to keep cost, and especially power consumption
down,
> you are more limited.  When you want to get several hours of running out
of one
> set of flashlight batteries, you have to watch those milliwatts.  The fast
> processors with mucho memory work pretty well as handwarmers on those cold
> observing nights.  Some of the fast Pentiums and their clones can pretty
nearly
> be used to cook your Thanksgiving turkey.
>
> Also, the general purpose operating systems can be really lousy for real
time
> control.  Now I think the proposal that started this thread was
envisioning
> pretty smart stepper controllers being run by a cpu that really doesn't
have a
> lot to do.  Thus one could save those milliwatts at the cpu and memory
level
> and use a few more at the stepper controllers.
>
>
> Mark Holm
> mdholm{at}telerama.com

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