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NASA Parts Scroungers Resort To eBay For Parts
beggs writes: "The New York Times is running this article about NASA using ebay and other web resources to find for sale stock piles of old hardware it needs to keep the Space Shuttle fleet up and running -- things like 8086 chips from pre-PC days!" Come to think of it, this might be a better way to take care of most NASA bidding anyhow.
Hey NASA! Over HERE!
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
What is NASA's feedback rating, and do they take/pay by Paypal?
NASA has a good feedback rating
it would definitely suck to get into a bidding war with them either way..
Why dont NASA buy that russian space shuttle that was for sale as we saw this week here on slashdot? :)) For 6 millions that is a bargain and it is much better than NASA space shuttle...
Fabio - Sumare/Sao Paulo/Brazil/South America/Earth/Solar System/Milky Way/Universe
http://www.morroida.com.br
for me to start hoarding 8086's!
;O)
My economics courses are all a blur, but..
Less supply -> higher cost
of course, there isn't much demand
NASA outbid me on a set of Star Wars collectable Burger King glasses from 1983. This is your tax dollars at work! Those fuckers won the auction too! They must have used some space-based technology to outbid me at the evry last second!
...but it'll increasingly be all of our problems in the future. A lot of really smart people are worried about the computer industry's quick pace and are worried that it's unsustainable. If I have a computer that I bought 15 years ago that's running a critical function in my workplace, it quickly becomes more expensive (in hardware costs) to support that piece of equipment than it does to buy a whole new machine. That's fine except that we then need to convert all the data over to new formats and operating systems, interface all our surrounding systems with the new system and generally spend a bunch of time and money replicating the functions of the old machine.
Sure, it's rarely ever that simple a scenario, but the computer industry should spend a bit more time thinking about sustainable growth rather than the next 300 Mhz of CPU performance.
Finally a justification for some of the absurd shipping and handling costs some of the ebay sellers charge....... They can now claim its for going to space....
Now you know how to get your $6 million Russian Space Shuttle *state-of-the-art*.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
Couldn't Transmeta chips (which are programmable to a degree) or FPGA's be an answer in the longer term? Obviously, a lot of the reason for requiring 8086 chips is down to form factor etc, but couldn't converters be made to help out?
Go ahead an mod me down because this is basically an emotional outburst, but I really think it is completely sad that society lacks the collective intelligence to see how important organizations such as NASA really are. The possibility of impact by an asteroid or other large space object alone justifies financing NASA adequately.
NASA is not so stupid as to not contract for replacement parts for the actual shuttle from subcontractors. This is just for support gear. Probably quite a bit of this gear is custom-built by NASA engineers, like programmers who build their own toolkits. As the article says, it's easier to just scrounge up a board than pay someone to redesign some piece of equipment to use updated components.
Why are you making fun of this. More private enterprise and being cost effective will really help NASA. Although I suppose there is something that's just funny about NASA bidding on e-bay, although it's possible it's just a joke/hoax.
I used to have the same problem in the Navy. Ever try and find a D.C. power supply for a VT100, or how about a head assembly for a RL02 disk drive? I finally started scrounging in local collage electronic surplus piles to keep my systems running. Just goes to show that systems made 20-30 years ago were built to last.
i have very strong apathetic feelings...
Oh Lord, I can see the auction titles now.
"FIRST CLASS! Slightly used moon capsule, 8/10, L@@K!"
"Tired of having no way to get to low earth orbit? Click here! BEST SHUTTLE ON EBAY!"
"VINTAGE EMPTY SATURN ROCKET STAGE--W0W! MAKES GREAT GRAIN SILO!"
(and yes, i know they're buying, not selling.)
Hey Taco! Looks like you're using the "infinite monkeys and typewriters" scheme to generate Ask Slashdots again...
If all the protocols and standards you use are open, then this shouldn't be a problem. Replacing a 10 year old mail server doesn't mean going back to the company that sold it to you, it means finding new SMTP software that fits your need and then using SMTP to transfer your email from one system to the other.
Obviously, this is a simplified example, but striving for openness and transparency in your original buying decision should make upgrading a lot easier.
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But I had my money on HMO's using this practice first!
Dull tools are useless. Sharp tools are dangerous. Never use the sharp end as the handle.
it seems like we can't make any cool, upgradeable large-scale systems, anymore.
a ce1.htmlmodel. ), and let's start mining those asteroids! NASA can do science, while the Solar System is pioneered by those imbued with that most useful of human motivations - pure, unadulterated greed.
What did we do when we needed large, mobile cruise-missile & artillery platforms? Why, we loaded up then-forty-year-old Iowa-class battleships, ships so old that it was tough finding personnel who knew how to work the guns!
The shuttle uses early-70s technology. The B-52, the first prototype of which flew in 1949 (!), is still our #1 conventional heavy bomber, and is a testament to forward-thinking in terms of modularity. But it seems that the trend is towards more monolithic, use-it-and-then-throw-it-away-and-buy-a-new-one systems.
Which is great for the suppliers, but not so great for the consumers (and in the case of NASA and DoD, the taxpayers).
I can generally get about 2 years of useful life out of a desktop PC, perhaps upgrading the RAM, video adaptor and CD/DVD/latest-useful-removeable-media drive along the way. I can get about 18 months of use out of a laptop, upgrading the RAM at some point. I can get 3-5 years out of a car, a (potentially) lifetime of use out of a good watch or a gun.
But the design principles I see in operation today are very much oriented towards disposability. Which is a bit of a problem when we're talking about multibillion-dollar systems.
What's the answer? For space, let private enterprise develop their own, market-driven Pull out of the Outer Space Treaty (http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/treaties/sp
For defense, I'm not so sure. The bureaucracy is so bloated and elephantine, and so many different factions are constantly trying to keep their rice-bowls from being broken, I'm unsure -what- it would take to reform their procurement methodologies. If September 11th isn't enough of a wakeup call that we need to move both quicker and smarter, I don't know what would serve.
They could get an IBM Mainframe running Linux , then partition it out to 40,000 virtual instances, and have each one running Bochs to emulate all the 8086 chips they need.
You know, it would probably still be cheaper then maintining what they have now in the way of hardware.
Problem is that they would need a third booster to get it and the power plant off the ground....
upgrading, is that new technology is often the stepladder to see further ahead.
I remember reading somewhere, that in order to supply parts to the military or NASA, you have to contractually agree to continue producing (or be able to produce) the purchased parts for something like 30 years, because equipment like jets and space shuttles are built to have a 30 year life span. Intel, when contracted, presumably agreed that they have to be able to make an 8086 until the space shuttle is no longer used.
So either the contract has expired and the shuttles have exceeded their lifespan, or Intel has broken its contract.
Intercarve Networks, LLC
So to keep the shuttles flying, the space agency has begun trolling the Internet -- including Yahoo and eBay -- to find replacement parts for electronic gear that would strike a home computer user as primitive.
That sounds incredibly dangerous. What if someone was able to somehow place a trojan into the parts they sell to NASA? Maybe in the bios, or something.
I still have my apple ][+ clone with a Z80B card and 5.25 inch 143k floppy drives.
I'd give NASA a discount since it is my own money.
Fight Spammers!
- That old computer in your basement? NASA is not interested.
Trolls will be disappointed !If they get ripped off by a seller? Would sure be a great way to cut down on fraud, if all the slimeballs on eBay had the possibility of committing fraud to the US gov't and paying the piper for it
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Why dont they just set up an extranet for suppliers to bid on? That would be a great tool for them, and a way to get some good prices while they're at it!
I agree that its really sad that they are "reduced" to this, but is it really so bad? hell I think its about time, at least ONE government org has some sense.
The other thing that this probably encourages is aggregation. They could potentially plan across many disciplines, and buy in a larger volume that way, satisfying more groups, and cutting costs.
NASA is a vestige of the Cold War. The US and Russia had a gigantic pissing contest in space to show of Marxism vs Freedom. Freedom won 10 years ago but the people who have jobs in the space program (just like military contractors) want us to waste out money to continue the nonsense.
that viewpoint will be great until the food riots start!
of course maybe the tiny area in the shuttle that contains a single 8086 processor may be just a little too small to fit a new zSeries, or PC for that matter.
Photos.
So to keep the shuttles flying, the space agency has begun trolling the Internet -- including Yahoo and eBay -- to find replacement parts for electronic gear that would strike a home computer user as primitive.
Considering NASA's lack of enough public support to prevent funding cuts in its budget, I find it odd that they have resorted to "trolling the internet"... Seems like the would be better off without all those negative mod points.
Doh!
Sept 11 didn't make people any smarter. No they sent off the army to a country that has more problems then just the taliban. Beat up the taliban and now what? Try to prevent civil war from starting up again? I think the situation there has great potential of becoming another festering pocket of trouble ready to burst uppon the world again.
What pure science is involved in the Shuttle program? Was Dennis Tito doing pure science? Is the NSync guy going to do science? Please. NASA is WELFARE for NASA engineers.
I can generally get about 2 years of useful life out of a desktop PC, perhaps upgrading the RAM, video adaptor and CD/DVD/latest-useful-removeable-media drive along the way. I can get about 18 months of use out of a laptop, upgrading the RAM at some point. I can get 3-5 years out of a car, a (potentially) lifetime of use out of a good watch or a gun.
.38 caliber relvolver. A fine piece of craftsmanship. It will be working long after I am rotting in the ground somewhere if I take care of it. It does one thing, it shoots little chunks of hot lead at subsonic speeds.
Tsk Tsk, you propose a radical answer, when your "question" is fundamentally flawed.
I buy a gun, lets say a
If I buy a computer, and I keep using the same software that came out designed for said computer, and I take care of it, I don't keep it in humid environments, I don't let it overheat, etc, then I'm sure it will last long after I am dead too.
It's only because you want to run new, bloated software, designed for new, bloated computers, that you have to upgrade so often.
It's like trying to shoot 357 magnums out of your 38. Sure, they fit in the chamber, but that isn't the gun that bullet is designed for. Don't be surprised if it doesn't work.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
We already produce way more food than we can consume, and we pay farmers to not to produce any more.
Food shortages will be alleviated by companies like Monsanto who geneticly engineer basketball sized tomatoes, and arm sized yams.
As soon as some scientist comes up with a warp drive let me know. Until then space travel is just an exercise in futility.
In the Vernor Vinge Hugo Award winning SF novel, "A Deepness In the Sky", a slower than light star-spanning humanity of about 12,000 years from now was unable to consistently stay above barbarism: planets and local systems would collapse into pretechnological cultures, resulting in massive diebacks. In the novel, Earth has been resettled four times after total local extinction. The problem is that in humanity's experience to that point there is a limit to how sustainable that all complex systems, including operating systems, cultures and machine intelligences can be. The hero of the novel (there are several, including several you don't expect), Pham Nuwen, tries and fails to create a way to transcend the cycle of growth and collapse. One of his jobs is "Programmer At Arms" . The novel ADITS is bitingly ironic: it is set in the "Slow Zone", where faster than light travel, sentient Artificial Intelligences and truly complex systems are impossible, whereas Vinge's previous Hugo winner, "A Fire Upon The Deep", is set 30,000 years later in the "Low Transcend", where transhuman intelligences are possible. In AFUTD, the Zones are considered to be artificial constructs of unknown purpose, possibly to allow Slow Zone species a nursary in which to develop before hitting the real world. Vinge, who will be the Guest of Honor at ConJose, the World Science Fiction Convention this year in San Jose, California, U.S.A., has recently retired from teaching Computer Sciences and indicated he wanted it both ways: using his experience in Usenet to give the flavour of low-bandwidth faster-than-light messaging between very diverse alien cultures and transhuman intelligences (much of the first part of AFUTD is at "Relay"), whereas with ADITS he wanted to examine what life would be like where current complexity problems remain insoluble (ie. a setting where his "Singularity" inflection point between human and transhuman intelligence does not occur). At one point, Pham Nuwen is attempting to take control back from his captors and has to deal with very low-level (for the time) software. It is clear that based on the "start date" of that operating system that it is likely UNIX or, for purposes of this post, Linux or other UNIX relation. Vinge is obviously very conversant with UNIX and also happens to be one helluva writer.
From my computer architecture class we learned that Intel, instead of building processors from scratch, builds new processors on top of existing ones. In other words, you can set a bit on the P3 or P4 to emulate the 8086. Why can't they just do that? I mean, you will need to build an "adaptor" per se to have it set a bit to get the chip into 8086 mode, but after which, it will function exactly like an 8086 chip.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
Background - the old EG&G ones were good. Then P-E bought that division and the modules they sell - while nominaly the same kind - burn out far too easily (high dark current).
I've even loked on eBay, but they can't be found for love or money...
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
I don't believe NASA is actually buying things for use on actual Shuttle hardware, either. However, this reminds me of thinking which got NASA in big, big trouble, and left seven astronauts very, very dead.
Part of the conclusions of the Rogers Investigation of the Challenger disaster discovered that NASA was severely underfunded for Shuttle flight hardware, requiring them to cannabalize parts between Shuttles to keep them operating. The shuttle Enterprise (a test vehicle that never made it to space) certainly has no flight hardware to speak of as it was removed for use on actual flying orbiters.
Why would NASA, an agency that should be using cutting-edge technologies in its missions, want old hardware for ANYTHING? (I know, I know--read the article...this is a knee-jerk post.)
Some food for thought that's a little off-topic: shuttle Enterprise was supposed to be refit for space flight, but engineers found it would be more expensive to refit than to take a spare orbiter fuselage used for structural tests: STA-099.
STA-099 was renamed Challenger. If it weren't for cost cutting, it would've been a nastier history, particularly to naval historians, WWII and "Star Trek" fans, to hear instead that a ship named Enterprise was destroyed on 1/28/86.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
One of my coworkers was a crew chief in the early 90's for a B-52 that was built in 1962. He said, even though the plane may be fourty years old, so many parts (nose, wings, tail, fuselage sections, navcomp, weapons, et cetera) have been replaced over time that the build date of the plane is more like 1980-something.
Cheers,
LV
Woot w00t w007.
Or maybe they think they are paying intel to much, and know they can get it cheaper.
And they might think why bother with a contract for older parts.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
I disagree.
B-52's did a fine job in the gulf war of 1991 and kosov. Why upgrade? I believe the b-52 bombers and the more modern aircrafts still use the same old early 20th century technology. They are more expensive but only slightly more efficient. Something newer may not be a whole lot better but would cost alot more. As a taxpayer I do not want a more modern jet. I pay too much as it is for military operations and for more b-52's. The b-52 was made to be modular and upgradable. You can just upgrade the computers and put more modern gps guided missiles on them as tine goes on. The stealth jets just use some fancy materials and designs to knock radar beams away from it but its still based on the same concept.
http://saveie6.com/
Up until about 4 years ago, I used to work for a major/small satellite company. One of my last tasks was to update the processor board used in many satellites... you guessed it, it was based on the 8086. What was my upgrade? I added an 8087 to it! These math coprocessors are even rarer - we bought the last 50 bare die in existence to eventually custom-package in a special high-density radiation shielding ceramic package.
:)
It was about that time that I decided that the company was going in the hole. It's not that the 8086's were particularily good processors... True, they are made with a bigger geometry and suck more power -- things that make them generally more radiation resistant than anything produced in the 1990's. But, they were never designed to tolerate radiation. (NASA isn't stupid - they have high-performance radiation tolerant parts like the RAD6000).
Since my company wasn't making even minimal internal investments (they had a '386 based system that they built but never applied power), I decided that, for my career, I should leave. I notice now that they are hiring people with 5 years of PowerPC experience -- eventually they must have decided to get with the times, but since they didn't keep their employees current, they shot themselves in the foot and now have to hire outsiders.
p.s. I'm back on the job market - anyone need a kick-ass PowerPC engineer?
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
In this article. I think it is just probably cheaper to find the replacement parts than to redesign the system again, it was probably designed well, robust and stable, unlike most modern systems. The engineers trust it, and perhaps are working on something to replace it eventually, but anything new would need a lot of testing, probably about 10 years. Maybe they'll upgrade to a 386 or a 486 soon.
I'm no aerospace engineer, but I know that the space shuttle has been around for quite some time. It seems to me like it is about time to redesign the shuttle. I'd think that NASA would need to do this anyway if they wanted a vehicle capable of making the long journey to Mars.
Unfortunately, I wonder if that will happen since NASA seems to be a big target for budget cuts nowadays.
Given that, how feasable is it for a shuttle redesign to happen within the next ten years?
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
A P4 wouldnt last more than a few minutes in a space environment. Single bit errors galore on something as susceptible as that..
-
I'm a little surprised by the claim of "wings" and "fuselage sections". Most military aircraft have a design lifespan that is limited by structural wear and tear. You can replace almost everything else, but structural components are not usually upgradeable.
For the B-52s this means that the remaining usable B-52s are the G and H models. All of the older ones have been scrapped because the structural components of the fuselage and wings have too many hours on them. They are past the point where they can be safely patched. But it is normal to replace electronics, engines, mechanical components, etc. New systems are designed with SLEPs (System Life Extension Program) in mind. You build a rugged frame and anticipate things like new engine technology in 20 years.
Another example is the U-2. These were also introduced in the 1950's. But the current flying aircraft were from a second major production run in the 1980's. These were designed with a mechanical lifespan of 75,000 flight hours. Most of the present systems still have 80% of their usable life remaining, so you will see flying U-2s for a long time. They are now undergoing a radical replacement of windshields and cockpit electronics. The new cockpits replace antique mechanical guages with a triple flatscreen computerized display system. The new cockpits are much lighter, more upgradable, and much easier to use while flying. (The U-2 is perhaps the most difficult airplane to fly that is in regular use. It spends almost the entire flight near the limit of losing control and with a cockpit environment of staggering hostility. For example, it flies at altitudes where the temperature is -85F and the pressure is so low that water boils at under 75F. Lose pressure and your blood boils out of your lungs. So the pilot spends the entire flight in a custom pressure/space suit. So every bit of improvement in flight aids to the pilot is welcomed.)
There are tons of people suggesting that NASA use current chips (Pentium, Transmeta, etc) to emulate the 8086. That's not the issue. The software would be easy to port or emulate, etc. The reason they use old chips is that they can go into space. The electromagnetic radiation as seen in space would totally fry a chip with a small fab. 8086s are large enough that their transistors aren't shorted. Sure, they could shield the computers, but that's expensive and largely unnecessary for the applications they're using them for.
a (potentially) lifetime of use out of a good watch or a gun.
Depends on what you're using it for.
Some uses makes for a very short lifetime...
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
My original observation was too broad. You are correct. My real gripe is with manned space exploration. Satellite imagery is very usefull, I love Microsoft Terraserver, but the usefullness of manned exploration is rather limited. Geology experiments on Mars would be fascinating to the Geologists amoung us, but would it really be worth 200 billion dollars. You can't get around the fact that the companies that stand to benefit from continued space spending are the same companies who drive up the military budget each year. These companies are wrought with fraud and mismanagement, yet people want to give them billions so than we can go to mars and do soil analysis.
I am not familliar with the correlation to fluid dynamics. I would only ask what would be more efficient: Giving the money to a government buracracy and hope a usefull breakthrough occurs, or give the money to a reasearcher at a university who is already doing work in this field?
I'll be as happy as anybody. But try this analogy. Say you were Chris Columbus trying to reach the other side of the world. But you don't have a sea worthy ship, only an old rowboat. Do you waste your time with the rowboat and try to make it, or do you just wait till you get a real ship?
When/if a real form of interstellar travel arrives we will use it. However we are nowhere close to discovering warp drives. They just aren't coming anytime soon. Even the vaunted Ion/Plasma/Scram/Ramjets that are going to take me to Tokyo in two hours, that have been 5 years away for 25 years, are still experimental.
Give me one link to a scientist who is anywhere close to demonstrating FTL propulsion for a ship and I'll eat my words.
The military's weapons development system is why we have 2 billion dollar stealth bombers, the companies you mentioned just happen to take advantage of it. And the military gets something like 10 times as much money as NASA for equipment we 'hopefully' will never use. Furthermore, NASA funding actually gets cut every year, while the military's funding keeps growing. I'm really not sure which situation is sadder.
Do NASA and the Military work on projects together? Sure. Do pet projects and pork barrel instances occur in NASA? Sure, happens in any government organisation. Should we cut NASA's funding? Hell no.
Unlike the military, NASA puts our money to useful purposes like exploration and scientific innovation, not better ways to kill each other. I find that a more noble use of what is really a minor amount of public funds. Hell, the Govt. spends more money keeping their Microsoft licenses current.
I wish NASA would just put up a list of things they need. I suppose that's their next step. If they'd just ask I'd be happy to send them a motherboard that is sitting wasted under my desk in the box that my new motherboard came in. It has an AMD-K6/300 microprocessor on it. I'm sure they can use it more than I can.
Might as well pick that up, too.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
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Give us your coordinates, and we'll be sure and drop you a little love-bouquet from 30,000 feet.
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What does this say about NASA, an organization that has been synonymous with advanced technology. What does it mean when they are so intrenched in their current ways that they have to go searching for obsolete technology just to keep functioning?
To me, it says that the US has no real intrest in advancing their space technology. What exists currently is good enough because it functions.
NASA is in such sad shape right now that they are not even innovating in their attempts to solve this problem. On this board, I have read stories of people getting an old Apple to read modern flash cards. I have read about people turning a Commodore 64 into a web server. Rather then come up with a workable and clever hack to fix their problem, they are scrounging for old parts. It may be harder to come up with a workable hack, but at least once it is in place, duplicating it would not be a problem. Sooner or later, those old 8086 chips will run out.
END COMMUNICATION
ummm....I think you miss read what he was saying. Ithink he was trying to say this was a good thing....reuse/update/adapt old equipment as neccessary, dont redsign/replace/get new equipment
Linux can run on a 486, done know if it can run in 64k of ram or not
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
The computer can't be easily replaced with a modern system. There is a large library of applications, in assembly language, that would have to be rewritten. It isn't a general purpose computer. Its architecture was carefully designed and optimized for a narrow task, and it does that task better than any modern general purpose computer. Duplicating its functionality with modern technology would cost a huge amount of money.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Every few years, they basically take the plane apart and put it together. Since many of the parts are no longer available from the original manufacturers, the facility that does this work has the ability to build pretty much any needed replacement part from scratch by measuring/analyzing/reverse-engineering the originals. (There was a story linked by /. a few months ago about the Air Force sending a B-52H to OCALC to be refitted and turned over to NASA to replace its B-52B launch aircraft, but I can't seem to locate it.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Define useful life? Is something's useful life over as soon as someone builds something faster? My main system is a K6-500 that does everything I would want a home system to do. Before that it was a pentium 166. Before that, Macintosh Classic. And they're all still useful, the 166 is a webserver, and the mac classic is a fishtank.
My laptop's a pII 333, before I got this I was using a Tandy model 102 (built in 1988), which I still use when I'm going out camping, because of it's long batter life and the fact that I don't need electricity to charge it ( just replace 4 AA's).
What are you doing that you need a new computer every 1.5 to 2 years?
If something I said can be interpreted two ways, and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, I meant the other one.
It's called "Linux". Use it. Learn it. Know it.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
When I get to my old age, digital antiques should be quite an interesting hobby. I just didn't expect it to be worthwhile quite so soon.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
dont forget everyone's favorite the 8042 (keyboard controller chip)... or the 8237 for controlling the DMA... and my favorite the 8259 for IRW control... hmmm maybe im going to burn my own ill call it the 80*42* casue it will find the ultimate question... hmmmmmm
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Well, you're computer may or may not survive for decades if it's taken care of optimally.
On the other hand, numerous subsystems may fail and if they are no longer manufactured, you may have to retool with one of those new machines.
This is the forward thinking planning that has to go on at places like NASA. If we depend on computers that are decades old, then we have to make usre there are still parts.
I trade obsolete and hard-to-find parts for a living, and while 20-year-old parts are rarely requested, it's not uncommon for manufacturing runs to continue for years past the time when a part is obsoleted. I've had to find about 50,000+ pieces of an older ('95-'96 era) Cirrus Logic video chip because the newer replacements wouldn't work, and the customer didn't want to redesign the board. By the way, I just inventoried a lot of excess parts, and I found several hundred 1978 Rockwell chips. Maybe NASA will want some...
The 1802 was used in voyager. Should say the one on non standar substrate. Last time I check the elf still fire up and work. Even have a Southwest Tecinical Products/ SSB that also fire up.
:)
Wow I have a lot of those ancient 8086 around.
If you think this is funny check what it take to work in the engine area of a shuttle. its a plumer nightmare back there!
I though the V90 was a 8088 emulator? It had 5% speed increase due to hard wire . Used one in a crummy Tandy 1000ex to try to help that pile of junk. Funny the base unit had no DMA untill you added some stuped board inside. Without it it rand at half of 4.7mhz!
Dennis Tito and "the NSync guy" paid (or will pay) their way into space using $20 million of their own money through the Russian Space Agency. NASA is not involved. They did not ride the space shuttle. The Russian plan to put tourists in space is problematic, but attempting to blame NASA for it is asinine. NASA has nothing to do with it, and they have expressed their displeasure with it at every possible opportunity.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
I've run ELK's Linux on my 8088-based IBM Portable PC machine. (0.3 Bogomips, WOW!) :) That's with 512k of memory. I can run 'vi' on 4 different virtual terminals, that's about it. :)
Before they gave up and put it on the auction block (see slashdot story) the Russians had their own hard-to-find parts "wish list" for their shuttle:
2 (two) Chicago Faucet Company water valves, one
marked "H" and one marked "C"
1 (one) Coleman brand fuel tank with built-in
hand pump
178 (one hundred seventy-eight) 5-gallon "gerry
can" fuel containers
30 (thirty) meters of Nichrome wire
1 (one) Edmund Scientific large-display countdown
timer
[omitted]
Their they're doing there hair.
Don't bet on it. Those little metal cylindrical cans on the motherboard are generally electrolytic caps with a goo sort of electrolyte... they dry out after 10-20 years. Not sure about tantalum electrolytic chip caps.
Tech Public Policy stuff
i would like to buy one... how much would it cost? :)
I actually thought about the electrolytic caps after made my post.
I almost amended it, but I think my point is still valid, computers last a lot longer than what we use them for, it's the software that is forcing upgrades usually, not the hardware.
I, for one, will be glad when someone invents a dry capacitor that can compete with lytics. Ever had one of those explode when you are working on a project? Gives my computer/gun analogy a whole new angle!
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The c-130 winboxes (the bit that holds the wings to the rest of the plane) were all rebuilt just a few years ago and thats about as much as a non-replaceable structrual part as you can find on those planes.
Space geology programs have made major advancements in the ways we find oil and many minerals.
The biggest advance of space research is that it can sweep away old wrong ideas that are just too ingrained in some fields of science.
What did an 8086 cost in 1976? $1,000? $500? Even with the hassle and expense of tracking them down, and cannibalizing, is it possible they might be paying less now than they did then?
Tech Public Policy stuff
Yeah, that's what happened to me too, accidentally installed a filter cap backward. I always remember the polarity of diodes in a bridge rectifier configuration now. :)
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
64k!! Luxury!! 12k 486 Debian (and a dos partition for a laff)
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
Of course, it would be a useless statement if the current shuttles still are based on 8086 (read: 8086 and 80286 are no where near pin compatible, so it isn't a drop-in solution). Nonetheless, if they were really having troubles, they could upgrade their boards to 80286 in a semi-reasonable amount of time, no?
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
"I can get 3-5 years out of a car"
You do know you are supposed to change the oil every 3-5000 miles, right? ;)
-- OpenVerse Visual Chat: http://openverse.com
> I can get 3-5 years out of a car, a (potentially) lifetime of use out of a good watch
My oldest car is an '89. (Well, I have a '78 Alfa too, but that's more of a pile of parts than a car as such at the moment and for the foreseeable future). I've only recently bought it, but I expect to get at least three years out of it, and the previous owner got more than five.
And I'm wearing a 1940's watch right now. It was my father-in-law's, and we think he bought it second hand when he was doing National Service in submarines. At the time, there was no such thing as a cheap reliable accurate waterproof watch. These days I could buy six or so equally functional watches for what I paid just to have this one serviced, so it only made sense for the sentimental value.
rant
Russia only flew it _once_ for a reason!
Yeah, there was a political sea change, the USSR broke up, pretty well the whole space programme went on hold and afterwards there wasn't the political will to keep spending on this kind of research. I am not sure I understand your point.... there are several well known references to how Buran was actually a better space plane than the US shuttle...
Next thing you know Nasa will be asking Russia for space shuttle parts.. Is this a good thing? What happened to technological advances on the space programs bringing technology to us? Certainly there isnt anything newly developed being used on the space shuttle which is all aww inspiring for us.