Article View: alt.folklore.computers
Article #621234Re: Analogue computing
From: Jon Elson
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2018 19:33
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2018 19:33
29 lines
3285 bytes
3285 bytes
Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote: > On Thu, 15 Mar 2018 07:09:07 -0400 > J. Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> I took that course a few years later and we had an electronic analog >> computer, from TI IIRC. It was kind of fun but by the time I got my >> first engineering job digital was "in" and just suggesting the use of >> analog anything marked one as some kind of reactionary, at least in >> the place I worked. > > Makes sense, once a digital computer is fast enough to solve a > given problem it will do a more repeatable and reliable job than an > analogue computer. > Well, there's two kinds of analog computing. For solving problems in an analytical way, digital has the HUGE advantage that you get the same answer every time, and debugging and documenting what you did is easy. However, once the IC op-amp came out, analog computing for production control systems got a huge boost. Today (and, really, from the late 1980's or so) digital computers with a couple ADC and DAC chips can do a very cheap, reliable, and reproducible job with a minimum of pots and adjustments. But, back in the 70's and into the 80's you could do a lot with a couple op amps. I retrofitted a cruise control on a car I had, it was an all analog solution, and worked very well. About a 2 x 3" PC board with 5 8-pin DIPs and some passives did the whole thing. Jon
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X-Received: by 10.107.15.88 with SMTP id x85mr4773390ioi.89.1521142081015; Thu, 15 Mar 2018 12:28:01 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: alt.folklore.computers@googlegroups.com Received: by 2002:a24:7d4f:: with SMTP id b76-v6ls1196324itc.9.gmail; Thu, 15 Mar 2018 12:28:00 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 2002:a24:4293:: with SMTP id i141-v6mr3432863itb.18.1521142080107; Thu, 15 Mar 2018 12:28:00 -0700 (PDT) Path: mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!a25-v6ni15itj.0!nntp.google.com!peer01.iad!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!border1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!buffer1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!buffer2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2018 14:27:54 -0500 From: Jon Elson <jme...@wustl.edu> Reply-To: jme...@wustl.edu Organization: Washington University Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2018 14:33:18 -0500 User-Agent: KNode/4.8.5 Subject: Re: Analogue computing Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: <p8bt82$afu$1@dont-email.me> <3qpqC.68549$my2.23288@fx16.am4> <mtkkad92em1bd9se0mr14q6q773np5no44@4ax.com> <20180315155655.f059bf6b0d53e187d5ec1403@eircom.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: <EMKdnV4NupanVDfHnZ2dnUU7-V_NnZ2d@giganews.com> Lines: 29 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-Trace: sv3-VU2LwaR4OnVpmXU2izcwbIluGwSokcN182JeMWY++vjokvgx4y1dg44WcMdWC50i28wXBrgZZq8RT5m!tg3KmCbE9SB2uuPpZGwjutUFUP5b4HUwe48KNu20QAVxgMhHB4vpO4wjLfnwB3K1o62kjtX4pEnn!Lw== X-Complaints-To: ab...@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 Bytes: 2707 X-Original-Bytes: 2614 X-Received-Bytes: 2736 X-Received-Body-CRC: 3743337138 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit