🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3...@ns-mx.uiowa.edu>, jo...@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) writes:
> From article <64...@lindy.Stanford.EDU>,
> by ri...@hanauma.stanford.edu (Richard Ottolini):
>> There are probably some good stories about how so much US space
>> exploration was managed with such primitive computers.
>>    ...
>> Part of the explanation is that it takes over a decade from design to
>> deployment of a space experiment.
> 
> Here's an unfinished story:  The physics department at the U of Iowa is
> currently building an experiment they intend to fly on the ISTP Polar
> mission in a year or two.  (Note, these are the same people who built
> Explorer I.)  I was involved in doing some of the preliminary algorithmic
> design for data compression routines they want to use so they can get
> more image data down to Earth, and here's what they've got:
> 
> A pair of 3.5 Mhz 80C86 processors, radiation hardened, for about $15,000
> each.  Wait!  Yes I know this is a $5 part, but it takes about a decade

  Well, the story isn't dead yet guys...  The 80C86 isn't available
in RAD hard vertsions for the radiation levels experienced in the
Van-Allen belts (Neither is the Rockwell chip mentioned in the previous
article, for that matter).  You've got your choice of the 1750, the 1802
and the 8085.

  Seems the vendor based specs on a process used on another chip
and not from actual tests.  The poor old '86 is expected to see
upset rates of 20-30 per day...

-- 
Bill Robison                                University of Iowa
Internet: SYS...@IowaSP.Physics.Uiowa.Edu   Physics & Astronomy
Span:     IOWASP::SYSWTR