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Atari 800XL Used For Heart Diagnostics
fuxoft writes: "Even today, 8-bit Atari can save your life! This article (with photographs) reports that Atari 800XL is still used in one of the biggest Czech hospitals, for diagnostics of children with heart problems. Even here, in the Czech Republic, where the technology is not always 100% up-to-date, this is very weird indeed."
I understand and sympathize with the view towards old hardware of "don't fix what's not broken." We all get more than a little sentimental for the hardware we used in the "old days," however long ago that may be.
However, the author was contacted because the equipment was malfunctioning. Since Intel hardware is so inexpensive, running this application on a P90 with Linux makes much more sense than using such an "exotic" piece of hardware.
The Free Software/Open Source community should step up to the plate and port this application - it would be hard to conceive of a more valliant effort for our talents. I'd certainly be willing to do it.
In a sense, there is no problem with this - it did the job well when it was a brand shiney new computer - and it's still (presumably) doing the job well right now.
:-) or at least getting *real* familiar with Atari emulators!
The concern I have is what they do as these machines start to fail? Do they have a fallback plan? It seems that someone should be porting this key chunk of software to (say) a 386
So often, people wait until it's too late to do that port.
I once worked in a company that used a BASIC program on 8088-based PC's to do a key realtime control operation in one of their products. When 8088's became unobtainable, they simply moved the code onto a 286 and discovered to their horror that it didn't work. Because this software had been written many years ago - and had never needed to be updated, they didn't even have a software engineer in that part of the organization (I worked in another division). They struggled on for a while buying up old 8088's second-hand and refurbishing them - but in the end, they called me in to rewrite the code.
It turned out that the code had done all it's timing using empty 'FOR' loops (Ick!) - which of course ran faster on the 286's. That was a hard problem to fix because by the time they had me on board, they'd sold the very last 8088 they could lay their hands on and I had no way to figure out the lengths of those delays loops. In the end, I had to chuck out the entire program and develop a new one from scratch in C (using hardware timers
and not empty 'for' loops of course).
www.sjbaker.org
The OP was pointing out that quality control has slipped dramatically over the years. Today's hardware has become overtly complicated, leading to numerous teething problems, just to squeeze an extra 5% performance from the hardware. Most of this complexity would not be required if we didn't have the need to run excessivly complex software instigated by the latest programming techniques. OOP with late linking and bytecode interpreters have a lot to answer for.
It is not that we need a faster computer to do the same things; we need a faster computer for the latest killer app. We needed to upgrade so that we could do desktop publishing, gaming, graphs, spell checking, the Internet, music sharing, or movie editing.
Good point. We've gotten into trouble by trying to have one machine for everything. That is, most people just want word processing and web browsing. The bulk of computers has come from needing to support high end applications, such as 3D modelling and magazine layout. Arguably it would have been better to have simple machines for most uses, then high-end specialized machines for those businesses that need it. This would be better than transferring unneeded R&D costs to the consumer every time something new comes along: MMX, Pentium III & 4, AGP, USB, SSE2, 3D-Now!, AMD 64-bit architecture, etc.
Actually, the 800XL could be boosted to at least 512K of ram.
I remember seeing an ad for a 4 meg upgrade a couple of years ago, but I can't find any trace of it on the web.
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The original poster wasn't talking about buying a p4. He mentioned a p90. I know a place here in town where, depending on inventory, I could probably get a server-grade p90 (dual hot swap PS, SCSI , 32Mb ram (heh), typical corp. file server from 5 years ago) for USD$300 or so. A basic p90 machine I could probably find for $100. PCs _are_ very cheap, if you buy a few years back on the tech curve.
Where did you pull the 1970's-pc-cpu-arch rant from? yes, the i4004 and i8008 chips were from the mid 70s, but here's a news-flash dude: the i586 bears as much resemblance to them as my left asscheck bears to the Queen Mum (<-- same pasty white color but thats about it). "a mish mash from different manufacturers" -- so? as long as it works, so what? If anything, this is a good thing becuase parts are easier to find. I'm sure the Atari's cpu and an pentium can both do the required amount of data processing, so there is no difference on a user-spec level between them.
I don't think there is anything technically wrong with old proprietary hardware, but that's not the point. The point is: can it push the bits so the docs can use it (it can), and is it easily maintainable (Atari loses big here). How many repair shops are there for early 80s Ataris compared to x86 shops?
Regardless of how you may feel about machine Foo versus machine Bar, it doesn't matter to the end users. They just want something that works reliably. This can be hard for techies to get becuase we care so much about the technical aspects, but most secretaries could give two shits if Word was coded in C or C++ or Befunge as long as it works (in as much as Word works).
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News for Geeks in Austin, TX
1) Maybe a 1.5GHz processor is not really necessary for any reasonable application.
2) Instead of better processors, we simply need better algorithms.
3) Instead of insisting that schools have the absolute latest computers, maybe we should make children try to do more with the systems they have.
4) Maybe I should just shut up.
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
Now we broke their last piece of technology by slashdotting their server!
...don't fix it.
Seriously, when was the last time you ever heard of unrepeatable bizarre crashes on the old 8-bit machines like this?
I would be a lot happier with mission-critical stuff run on a ZX Spectrum than on any new PC.
Judging by the speed at which the page loaded, they're using another one for the webserver. Probably got a pair of z80 based routers too.
--Shoeboy
For a very long time, nobody east of the "iron curtain" was allowed to buy 16-bit hardware. Which guarantees the development of a pool of expertise in 8-bit platforms. It would be interesting to know how many Apple II, Comodore 64, 8088-PC experts there are in eastern Europe.
And remember that the Atari was specifically designed for data acquisition. Of course, that normally means joysticks and such, but I seem to recall a certain popularity as a lab machine when it first came out.
And of course, there's the economic factor. I doubt if many Czech hospitals have the hard cash it would take to buy the off-the-shelf equivalent from Agilent.
Hey, now I know what to do with all that old hardware I couldn't bear to throw out!!!!
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At the risk of sounding like an anti-consumer-society rantist, what's weird is that all these computers are being thrown out when they're still useful. How many people out there are using a PIII for surfing and a bit of word processing? How many 486s are thrown out each year because they're obsolete?
The 800XL is a powerful computer. Not by today's standards, perhaps, but basic data-processing needs haven't advanced so much in the last fifteen years that the an atari, a ti99-4a or even the noble spectrum can't handle them. I'd have my doubts about a vic 20, but I've had those doubts for decades now.
Personally, I'm delighted that these things are still being used, rather than stuck on a landfill leeching lead and PCBs into the ground.
Replacing the hardware with something better would be cheap and easy. The difficulty would come in porting the software. As long as the software you need runs acceptably well on the hardware you've got, the (rational) motivation to upgrade is low.
That said, fast new hardware is a wonderful thing. For developing, high level languages and reduced compile times make a big difference. For many scientific applications, it just isn't practical to run on slower hardware.
I guess the lesson is, for every task, the best tool is the one that does the job.
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
My internal clock counts in centuries and uses (binary) fixed point arithmetic with only two decimal places. Crap isn't it? I'm waiting to get upgraded to 16 bits.
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Nearly 25 years after its release and with less memory and a slower CPU than any Atari a Sinclair ZX81 still makes just as good a doorstop as it ever did.
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If you open up just about any piece of life saving (ie., ECG) or other crital box of electronics (rail road switch) you will find 8 bit microcontroller at the heart of it. Whis is a world of 8KB of RAM and a few MHz of clock speed. Using an 8 bit micro for more than one real-time task is a challange, but with some very carefull ASM code it can be done.
One thing that make my skin crawl is the thought of connecting up patients to an off the shelf computer without any electrical isolation. Just place electrodes on your chest so that you have a direct electrical path into your heart from the computer. Hook those electrodes to a power supply built by the lowest bidder to minimal standards. Now ask yourself, "are you feeling lucky, punk?" An off the self computer can be used just fine, but propper engineering MUST be done to provide proper isolation at the pre-amps before the signal reaches the computer.
For that matter the largest selling computing platform on earth is a 2 MHz Z80-like 8 bit micro ---- Game Boy!
On-On,
Scott
Good luck putting 500 gigs in a vic-20: It looks to me like the Vic 20 only had 3 address lines available for bank switching. I'd love to know how you plan to work around that.
Also, there were commercially available products to give over a meg of memory to an 800XL which just plugged into the expansion bus. Take a look here for an example of how far an 800XL could be pushed with commercially available upgrades in 1987. Sure blows the additional 512k that your C128+1750 had out of the water...
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Atari in hospital
I was contacted some time ago by some person asking me if I can help with repair or replacement of Atari 800XL for hospital. I was very curious about that, because it's known that Czech hospitals are in bad financial situation but I just wondered how they could use it at the end of the nineties. The person was kind enough to send me some details about setup and also sent me few pictures.
Description
It's used in child cardiocenter in Faculty Hospital Motol for the heart diagnosis. They are looking for uninvited leaks between two parts of heart. Principle is in injecting isotope in blood and screening its movement in vascular system of pacient.
Usage
1) Computer is started, program is loaded from cassette.
2) Entering the data of patient (name, birthdate, height, weight).
3) Entering the date & time of checkup.
4) Entering the age of the isotope.
5) Program computes the optimal amount of isotope.
6) The probes are pointed to certain places of patient's body.
7) Injection of isotope.
8) For 5 minutes the program records the data from the probes.
9) Saving the data to cassette.
10) Disconnecting the gamma interface, connecting the teletype interface.
11) Priting of the protocol to teletype.
The checkup could be done by usage of other gamma camera, but it takes about 1 hour and the amount of isotope needs to be higher.
Setup
4 gamma probes
plotter
Atari 800 XL
Atari XC 12 datasette with Turbo2000
teletype T100
interface Atari gamma probes (two joystick connectors)
interface Atari teletype (one joystick connector)
monitor
Pictures
(70 KB JPG)
Detail of setup. Black box at the left behind is power supply for interface.
(74 KB JPG)
Overall look to gamma probes and plotter.
(67 KB JPG)
Detail of setup.
(66 KB JPG)
Overall look. At the left is teletype machine.
(65 KB JPG)
Overall look.
(62 KB JPG)
Detail of sticker on the computer. I wonder where did they got it.
Atari pages accessed xxx times.Last modified: Wed Dec 6 13:33:40 2000
(c) 2000 Jindroush
Nobody believes the official spokesman, but everybody trusts an unidentified source. -- Ron Nesen
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
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Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
Now when the US implements national health care, they can use this as a blue print and make it affordable for us without raising taxes:)
Name me one country in the world where there is as much money to spend on healthcare as people would like.
If an Atari does the job then use an Atari. They're cheap. I wonder how many more patients in the UK or US could be treated if people didn't upgrade their computers/stethescopes/coffee machines etc. because they want something new and shiny, rather than because there's a good reason for it.
Plus, it's probably pretty well debugged by now...
I'd hate to be on the receiving end of a healthcare system with such antiquated stuff.
As long as it works, why? Would you prefer a hospital that uses a multi-million dollar piece of equipment to take your temperature in only twice the time it takes to use a regular thermometer?
The thing is, most of the people who would object to that also want lower healthcare costs. Is it really necessary for non-critical hospital equipment to be built to milspec or better? The equipment in question is a useful diagnostic tool, but nobody dies if it is down for a day.
On the "Atari in Hospital" page there is a sticker that is on the Atari that says "US Government Property". The author of the webpage asks what the sticker may mean, here is what it does:
The sticker is a little identification mark that is put on all Department of Defense Dependents School (DODDS) properties including computers.
DODDSs school are located all over the world, including Germany which isn't quite that far from the Czech Republic. Knowing quite a bit about these schools, I know that they just recently (about 2 or 3 years) ago moved to this ID type, so if this computer has this sticker, then the Atari really is from an American school somewhere in Europe.
I really don't know how Czech people would receive this Atari (especially since the sticker would be removed if the computer would be donated or sold through government auction/sale)
If you have any more questions, be sure to ask.
The "game" ports were actually as follows:
One latched "trigger" input for the FIRE button. On each leading edge of this input only signal, the x/y position of the electron beam was stored in a pair of registers for light pen implementation.
Four I/O bits from the 6532 PIO chip. These were user settable as either input or output lines via a mask register on the 6532.
Two ADC converters. There was no DAC facility. The buggers worked by discharging a capacitor at the end of vertical blank and charging it back up through the input line. When the voltage reached a predetermined level, the Y value of the electron beam was copied into a register.
It don't believe that it would be very difficult to implement this sort of primitive I/O on a more modern system. The ADC function would require a bit of hardware, but not much.
forth ?love if honk then
>Is there any cheap alternative for a linux router? A small low power EPROM-able device that could run a Linux router at low power? Something without a fan and a hard drive?
q u= cable+router
http://www.us.buy.com/retail/searchresults.asp?
OK, so it's not Linux, but these things are cheap and have no moving parts.
Computer manufacturers are pushing the limits of technology, and the shortened life span of a computer and the development cycle is necessary to keep the tremendous growth that these companies now expect. (nee and so does wall street) This is great for us gadget people that always like the latest and greatest. It's not so good for companies that are forced to retire a substantial investment in hardware because it won't run the lastest MS WORD 2K sp1rev5.
The affect these diminished "time to market" approaches has on quality of hardware and software is also readily apparent. (10 years ago how often did you need to flash the BIOS?)
Isn't that one of the great things about Linux? Many people are running firewalls from an old 486 with mimimal RAM. Sure is much cheaper and "enviromentally friendly" (*groan* hate that phrase) than buying a new NT machine that you can bring to it's knees with check point.
In the end if the equipment works for you, and if it's reliable then use it. The old atari's never crash, is it any wonder that it's in a mission critical application? Necessity is the mother of invention. Because that invention is old does not make the solution any less valid.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
was in "Xanadu: the house of the future", an attraction in the Wisconsin Dells. I believe it is closed now, but even in the early '90s an Atari 800 was still controlling all the lights and appliances in the house. How futuristic!
While it is a shame that these machines are gathering dust in thrift stores in America, the truth is that almost nobody would know how to put one to really good use. As word processors, they're adequate as long as an 80-column dot-matrix printouts are adequate. As spreadsheet calculators, they're archaic and less intuitive than programs like Microsoft Excel. And, generally, in the workplace, if you find someone who can use a computer without a mouse, that person is worth enough money that you can as easily buy an Intel or Apple machine as hire them. The appropriate software for a given job might exist somewhere, but unless you've grown up reading Antic magazine and know all the websites and own an APE cable, good luck finding it. Though, at games, they rock as much as ever; cartridges don't bit-rot like disks do.
The Commodore 64 has done slightly better for itself, as at least it has GEOS, which supports mouse input and WYSIWYG sorts of applications. In that regard, though, even an original 1984 Macintosh is superior. In fact, an old Mac is perfect for a lot of modest tasks, because it has the GUI interface and WYSIWYG support that represents what people expect from computers. And the necessary software often does exist, even if it is outdated and hard to find nowadays. It will suffice, as long as one does not raise the question of the Internet.
The obsolescence of 8-bit computers is not a technological one; it is a cultural one. It is not that we need a faster computer to do the same things; we need a faster computer for the latest killer app. We needed to upgrade so that we could do desktop publishing, gaming, graphs, spell checking, the Internet, music sharing, or movie editing.
The exception, of course, is when you upgrade because the latest version of your favorite Microsoft program is slower than the last one, for some reason.