From: "Dwight K. Elvey" 
To: atm{at}shore.net
Reply-To: "Dwight K. Elvey" 


Hi
 I heard from the horse's mouth( Chuck Moore ), that is was first
written to control a carpet machine. Later it was used to process data at
Arecibo. I don't think it was used for telescope control until it was used
at Kit Peak.
 The reason it was used at Arecibo was because it had a
much more efficient multi-tasking method. This meant that more users could
be on line at once. Dwight


>From: "George Anderson" 
>
>Even nicer since I seem to remember that Forth was written for scope
>control. I used to have a nice little Forth interpreter for the Apple][
>before I switched to the dark side.
>
>George Anderson
>Montreal Canada
>
>Clear skies and good health
>
>Scott Berfield wrote:
>>
>>  Wow - I haven't heard anyone even mention Forth in years. We used to
>> call it a write once, read never language. Powerful, compact, and
>> totally incomprehensible a day after you write the code. :)
>>
>> Some of the most violent arguments I ever heard back in the 80's were
>> over Forth - proponents of the language tended to get a little, well -
>> zealous in its defense. It is a great language for doing embedded
>> control applications - as long as you never have to try to maintain
>> someone else's code.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: owner-atm{at}shore.net [mailto:owner-atm{at}shore.net] On Behalf Of
>> Dwight K. Elvey
>> Sent: Monday, June 02, 2003 9:50 AM
>> To: atm{at}shore.net
>> Subject: Re: ATM: Field Rotation and GoTo Scopes
>>
>> Hi
>>  Also look at evaluation boards from the original manufactures.
>> These are usually cheaper than other SBC's. Another processor to look at
>> is the 80186/188's. These have been around for a long time but can be
>> handy. I have an evaluation board that was made by AMD ( we no longer
>> make 186's ). It comes with enough flash and RAM to easily meet the
>> requirements of such a system.
>>  For languages, you should also consider using Forth. Especially while
>> you are debugging things. Once you have your hardware up and running,
>> you may want to switch to something like C because of source
>> availability. It is quite easy to put a native Forth on most SBC's. This
>> give one the ability to interactively debug and work out algorithms.
>> I've used this language on all of the embedded applications I used to do
>> at a previous employer( actually two back ). I even did one project that
>> I rewrote things into C and still figured that I saved about a month on
>> the project( a customer requirement ).
>> Later
>> Dwight
>>
>> >From: "Emery Greg" 
>> >
>> >Tom:
>> >
>> >Your welcome to pass along my email to your friend - I am not working
>> >on it
>> now, but hopefully in a year or so :).
>> >
>> >In terms of cost, if a cheap laptop can be bought second hand from the
>> internet- the laptop and stepper interface via the parallel port is of
>> the same order of cost as the controller board or SBC.  If you are
>> buying a new laptop, microcontrollers or SBC is much cheaper.
>> >
>> >I just hate going to one of my clubs darksites and seeing a
**&^%%!!!
>> >laptop
>> screen - even if it is in night vision mode.
>> >
>> >Jeff,
>> >
>> > I remember seeing the Rabbits.  The Motorola or Zilog seemed neet as
>> > well -
>> Basic or C language programming, in circuit EEPROM all via RS232.
>> Doesn't get more convenient than that :):)
>> >
>> >ttfn
>> >greg
>> >
>> ---snip---
>
>

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