Heck, I did some work on the ground control system for MOL.

Post #49,487 by a6l6e6x 8/15/02 2:22:12 PM Reply	Heck, I did some work on the ground control system for MOL. Well, not that much. [link\|http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/project/mol.htm\|MOL] - Manned Orbiting Laboratory. IBM had the contract for an easily re-configurable "triplex" system using 3 IBM 360/67 CPUs. I was an engineer on the 67 CPU and briefly helped getting it to work with what IBM called Large Capacity Store (LCS) - all of 8 MB of memory with 8 microsecond (NOT nanosecond) cycle time. To be fair, LCS belonged to the preceding generation of technology. LCS was relatively cheap. The normal IBM 360/67 memory had an 800 nanosecond cycle time core memory and most machines had 512 KB. 256 KB cost the customer about $250K. The MOL project was cancelled in 1969. Further OT: While on a surprise field trip helping with the first integration of LCS and 360/67 CPU delivered to Carnegie-Mellon U. in Pittsburgh, Isreal fought the Six Day War. I was in Pittsburgh a week. Alex "Television: chewing gum for the eyes." -- Frank Lloyd Wright
Post #49,491 by Another Scott 8/15/02 2:57:18 PM Reply	You weren't in Pittsburg in October 1973 too, were you? >:-)
Post #49,505 by a6l6e6x 8/15/02 4:07:32 PM Reply	Nah, never agian. :) Alex "Television: chewing gum for the eyes." -- Frank Lloyd Wright
Post #49,494 by altmann 8/15/02 3:18:04 PM Reply	Well I ... helped write the payload control software for [link\|http://www.wff.nasa.gov/~sspp/gas/sts/sts-90.htm#G744\|G-744], a shuttle [link\|http://www.wff.nasa.gov/~sspp/gas/\|Get Away Special] payload. Not much really. Just a take a reading, take a picture, wait loop on a custom 68HC11 computer. Tis the sum total of my embedded programming experience. Most of what I did was manufacturing and CAD work. I also worked on [link\|http://www.wff.nasa.gov/~sspp/gas/sts/sts-57.html#G399\|G-399] and [link\|http://www.wff.nasa.gov/~sspp/gas/sts/sts-64.html#G178\|G-178] (that's me 3rd from the left). It looks like I should document this somewhere. The old page for the project seems to be gone now. -- Chris Altmann
Post #49,504 by a6l6e6x 8/15/02 4:06:13 PM Reply	A GAS, :) Cool! Alex "Television: chewing gum for the eyes." -- Frank Lloyd Wright
Post #49,663 by altmann 8/17/02 2:37:49 AM 8/17/02 2:42:22 AM Reply	Yup. It was a GAS. It was an interesting time. It kept me at a 2 year college for "somewhat" more than 2 years. I got to see the rollout of the shuttle Endeavour, and later saw its first launch (with one of our payloads on board). I also saw another shuttle on the pad up close. Impressive. On that flight, we did the payload integration (just into a can, we didn't see in the cargo bay or anything) in what was apparently the building used to work on the radioisotope generators for one of the deep-space probes (Pioneer?) We were working on a microsatellite design intended to piggyback on a Delta launch, but funding fell through and we were unlikely to be able to raise the $12 million launch fee with bake sales and T-shirts. A [link\|http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/96/mpfsnsr.html\|sun sensor] for the satellite was used to ground test Mars Pathfinder's antenna -- Chris Altmann Edited by altmann Aug. 17, 2002, 02:42:22 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #49,524 by wharris2 8/15/02 7:46:33 PM Reply	Good 'ole 360's My mother used to work as a keypunch operator for one of the 360 series. (I think it was a 360, though I was very young at the time, I may very well be mis-remembering.) I remember (must have been sometime in '73) her loading up the disk pack with the program and allowing me play 3-D tic-tac-toe during idle times. They upgraded to a computer made by some other company a couple of years later that (gasp) had a gigantic 5-meg disk capacity. Huge foot and a half multi-level disk platters. When they scrapped that system, I managed to snarf one of those disk packs. Probably not many places in the world even has the capability of reading anything off that disk, even if the media is still readable, but it's an interesting momento to ancient computer days. The lawyers would mostly rather be what they are than get out of the way even if the cost was Hammerfall. - Jerry Pournelle

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