The Microship Status Reports

Microship Status 1/18/94 by Steven K. Roberts

In This Issue

Lots Of Random Updates

Still alive! This is embarrassing -- my last daily status report was 11 days ago. Things have been incredibly busy around here, with so much happening that the easiest way for me to catch up is with a bunch of random updates and no attempt at cohesion...

Today, I installed the Real Time Clock and the Serial boards on the Hub development system, and we can watch the time changing via the LCD with a few simple lines of FORTH code. This involved recycling a 34-pin ribbon connector (a rather ugly process), and mounting the boards on standoffs on the chassis. But it worked the first time, something that always warms a hardware hacker's heart...

Dan Yang is now working here almost every day. He's from Taiwan (a Taipei personality...), and is into systems & controls. He'll be our "lab coordinator," a job that includes asset relocation, fabrication projects, parts ordering, and learning everything about everyone's project in order to provide continuity across quarter boundaries. Today, Dan rescued my vise from Seaweed Canyon and mounted it on the bench, reversed the RJ-11 connectors on one end of every inter-node cable, then installed RESET pushbuttons in all the control network junction boxes. All this adds up, given a bit more work, to a bench network for FORTH development that allows easy installation and disconnection of individual nodes.

Agnes deGuzman is also working here almost every day -- she's becoming the engineering project manager for 199 credit. She has just begun the learning curve, and is reading my articles and design specs, sending media copies to sponsors, and sorting out the vast library of help offers from dozens of people who would like to be involved. As some of you (hi, Jeremy) have doubtless noticed, I tend to be inefficient at following up on offers of project assistance, even though I'm often overloaded here. Much of this is simple difficulty in delegating until I know peoples' skills; the rest is the half-megabyte of saved email that's just too much to wade through. Agnes is dealing with it, and will help with all management aspects of the whole process...

Michael Bream and Chris Tuft upgraded the SE/30 to System 7 today, and helped clear out a bunch of old disk clutter. Feels wonderful to have consistent, high-quality tools across all platforms! Since this is the development console for all the control system projects (ECE-190B), it's great to have the space clean and well-organized.

The FORTH projects are all developing in parallel, which is interesting to watch. I'll post details here as appropriate, but in general, we've seen lots of FORTH education, agreement on central data structure between audio and serial crossbar teams, initial GPS familiarization and external power connection, and considerable research on all fronts. The lab has become a busy place...

John Studarus and the rest of the Information Networking Team (int@nrl.ucsd.edu) have brought up a World Wide Web server on our Tadpole SPARCbook. Access it via Mosaic using the URL: //nrl.ucsd.edu/ and you'll find images and full textual archives... all still under development. The public interest from Out There is amazing: yesterday, a holiday, saw 296 accesses from the Net.

Last week is a sort of blur -- I was sick for the first half and overloaded the second. The Saturday previous included a worthwhile event, however -- about 10 mechanical engineering students showed up here for a sort of orientation meeting led by TJ Tyler and Robb Walker. We identified four major project areas (overall frame structure, crossbeams, wheels, and outrigger attachments) and did quite a bit of useful brainstorming. TJ and Jeff Klompus have now been officially sanctioned by the Mechanical Engineering Department to do a technical elective on the frame structure, including Finite Element Analysis on the Cray C-90. We'll have lots to report on this as it develops.

Clark Guest has written a FORTH reference stack in HyperCard, using the New Micros literature as a source. If you're working on any of the control systems, this, a copy of Pocket FORTH for the Mac, and the second edition of the Brodie book are now the essential references for learning curve development.
Lots of care packages arrived last week! In addition to a batch of connectors and cables and the 13 FORTH boards from New Micros, we received the complete Ampro 286 system -- an amazing assemblage of 3.6 x 3.8 inch stacking circuit boards. The boards include the CPU, Ethernet, VGA, and disk and I/O controller. There is also the interface card for the Sharp color LCD. We haven't even started to put all this together yet -- I'm looking for someone *very* DOS-literate who wants to take on both hardware and software for what will become the control system's host environment.

Literature is flowing in, but I've given up on the "Literature Received" column that was a regular feature of these reports. Nobody ever seemed to use it, not even me. I will say that we've been receiving a fairly steady diet of magazines, catalogs, and spec sheets in response to a number of simultaneous research projects into such things as autopilots, clutches, composites, boating accessories, and more. If you need information on any part of this, check the library here... Agnes and I have its organization near the top of the TO-DO list.

Much is afoot, but I'll leave it at this quick update for now -- more detailed system close-ups will follow.

Cheers!
Steve