[ale] [OT] Mars Lander!

[Jim Kinney]

The last time I was in a working control room was KSC in 1966 and the
stations had a TV-like display and a zillion mechanical buttons. I
don't think they HAD any computers they we would recognize. Most stuff
was tubes and analog.

On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 3:55 PM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
> JD <jdp at algoloma.com> writes:
>
>> Wikipedia says that the rover runs: "VxWorks (multitasking)"
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_embedded_computer_systems_on_board_the_Mars_rovers#Performance_comparisons
>>
>> The CPU is a radiation hardened PowerPC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750 .
>> I saw a bunch of MacBooks in the control room last night. I couldn't make out
>> what OS the built-in workstations were running, but they appeared to be some
>> sort of UNIX.
>
> I've not been at JPLs control room, only the launch control room at KSC
> in Florida.  When I was at KSC the workstations were all Suns.  But it's
> possibly they have switched them out to something else in the past
> decade since I was there.
>
>> Real-time OSes are different from desktop or server OSes.  A late answer is a
>> wrong/bad answer.  When I was programming spacecraft avionics, I would have
>> loved to have one of those PPC processors and a modern OS.
>>
>> I couldn't find any current information about in 20 minutes of
>> searching online and reading about the OS running on the workstations
>> and servers used at JPL Space Flight Operations Facility. Most of what
>> I found was historical from before the 1990s.
>
> And what did they use then?
>
> -derek
> --
>        Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>        Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>        URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
>        warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
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-- 
--
James P. Kinney III

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you
gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his
own tail. It won't fatten the dog.
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain

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