The motivation is, how to keep these old boards running with a minimum of time invested. We get up to five boards a day in for repairs and anything I can do to improve the throughput (about a month behind currently) would be a plus. That's my motivation...not 2001 (very cute though, ROTFL). I think that combining the pods with the modern computer would be a useful addition to the techs bench. There are still LOTs of these out in the real world as well you know....many of them are fixing things other than old video games. I suspect that so many of them turn up for auction is the frustration with the time curve of using them effectively. It is just an intellectual toy, fun, but is it worth the time? I still think it is, but I can't write software effectively....but I'm going to keep poking at it in my spare time...one needs a hobby after all... Perhaps porting Fredric's code to the IBM is the best solution...not an enormous amount of time, and a few new cool tricks. John :-#)# At 03:40 AM 27/02/2002 -0600, Mark Shostak wrote:
Having a probe to enable a Guided Fault test routine is a great plus. Of course, one could use a simple interface for a Serial Port as well, and one could still use the probe's I/O features...
An old (or not so old) notebook computer that is a complete test fixture/burner is quite intriguing...sell your bases now while they are still worth something ;-)
And, with some speech synth s/w, I can see it now:
"John, Please replace the AE35 AVG Controller, it appears to be inoperative."
Followed some time later by:
"What are you doing John? John? Why are you removing my G08 outputs? Stop... John. Stop. ...Daisy, Daisy...".
Oy
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Automated test would be nice. With the existing h/w (i.e. Fluke + pods + tape or serial), all that is required is script developement. For what we're discussing here, there is h/w development, s/w development AND script development.
Again, it sounds fun and it would be nice to have, but can the effort be justified by the return?
The people who can do this type of thing, can alreay fix the boards fairly fast as it is.
I don't see the ROI. So what's the motivation? All I see is "fun", but that motivation dies quickly when the real drudgery hits.
-Mark