encryption devices, radiation-hardened devices , Forth and an INTELLIGENT UPS

[bill payne <billp@nmol.com>]

Thursday 7/23/98 12:16 PM

John Young

I am looking at http://www.jya.com/cr072298.txt

REASON we did the 8051 Forth at Sandia is that I was ORDERED by
department manager Kent Parsons to port Forth from the 8085
to the 8051.

Sandia built a radiation-hardened 8085 chip set.

However, the 8085 took up lots of room and did not have timers, serial
expansion, bit-addressable registers/memory, on-board UART, etc.

Parsons helped convince Sandia upper management to build the 8051 as
a rad-hard part.

The guys doing the 8051 testing of the Sandia rad-hard part were writing
SIMPLE machine language programs to test the part.

Like hooking an LED to a port, flashing the LED, to see when it quit
while being irradiated.

We pointed out that running Forth itself exercises much of the 8051.

In addition writing test code for the instructions and hardware not
directly exercised by Forth was easy, in comparison to other software
technologies.  Either in high-level Forth or Forth assembler.

I managed a contract for Jerry Boutelle, author of the Nautilus II
metacompiler, to write test code for Sandia's 8051 rad-hard part.

Then, of course, I wrote a SANDIA-APPROVED book about our port of 8085
FIG Forth to the 8051.

http://www.apcatalog.com/cgi-bin/AP?ISBN=0125475705&LOCATION=US&FORM=FORM2    

And we shared the source code and documentation with anyone interested
in learning what we did.  

http://jya.com/f86/whpf86.htm 
http://jya.com/whpfiles.htm

While writing this note, I am watching an 8051 Forth run the test code

: XX 2 BASE ! 0
  BEGIN DUP U. 1+ ?TERMINAL 
  UNTIL ;

to see how many 8051 machines still work.

Let�s switch subject to A NEW INNOVATION in Uninterruptable Power
Supplies.

Yesterday I bought a CyberPower Power 98/250VA for all for $59.95! at
Best Buy. http://www.cyberpowersystems.com/

Previously I looked at CompUSA at a APC 250 which had a rebate making
the final cost $79.99.  But NO MICROCONTROLLER and, thus, no brains.

CyberPower has a MICROCONTROLLER in it.
http://www.cyberpowersystems.com/products.cfm

Here is what you get.

1  lead/acid battery
2  SERIAL PORT in the UPS
3  Three UPS sockets - one for a transformer
4  Three surge-protected sockets - one for a transformer  450 joule
5  3.5 diskette containing Win 3.xx/9x software
6  One 9 pin rs232 cable
7  One 6 foot rj11 cable
8  Two rj11 surge-protected sockets.

Here is the idea.

The UPS monitors the line voltage.  

When the line voltage fails, then the UPS switches to battery.

The UPS then sends a message to your PC over the rs232.

The CyberPower software then closes all open files then turns
off your PC.

I am only running our PC and 15 inch screen from the battery backed up
supply.  Modem and printer go to the surge-protected sockets.

I pulled out the plug to the CyberPower Power 98/250VA and 
it switched over to battery.

I noticed some lines across the screen.  I attribute the lines to dc/ac
conversion and voltage step-up.

UNFORTUNATELY, I am using com1 for our mouse and com2
for our external modem.

Therefore, I am not able to try the software yet.

Alternative I have to fix this problem are get a

1   PS2 mouse and free-up com1
2   get another serial card for about $20.

Green return receipt request card received today indicated that
http://www.jya.com/whp071598.htm was received on Friday July 17, 1998

Let�s all hope this HORRIBLE matter gets settled soon so we can all move
on to OTHER constructive projects.

Later
bill