Some corrections about the Apple success story

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path_finder
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Some corrections about the Apple success story

Post by path_finder »

From 1975, the MTIS Altair 8800 computer, the first mass microcomputer :
http://oldcomputers.net/imsai8080.html,
NOT the APPLE, and NOT the MICRAL like defended in France.

I was in 1976 in the Dymo-Industries Research Center (Aquatic Park, Berkeley CA), working on the development of the first manufactured (and sold) 8080 portable computer. We made a visit to Rockwell which had just introduced its 6502 microcomputer, just before Steve Job and Wosniak decided to use it into the new Apple 1, just a project at that time.

Apple has not been the inventor of the mouse/icons etc. but invented by the PARC (Palo Alto Research Center, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company)) in 1971 in the Alto microcomputer, at a time where even the microcomputers do not exist at all (the first microcontroller 4 bits, the Intel 4004 has been invented for Nippon Calculating Machine Corporation in 1971).

The Xerox company (PARC owner) engaged an lawsuit in the Court against Apple for patents infringement, and fifteen years after Apple must pay an important fine even if an arbitration decided to close the fight. But Apple had a good marketing and today 99% of the people are still believing the fact Apple was the precursor, forgetting the catastrophic introduction of LISA-3 (Fortunately the Macintosh reversed then the situation in 1984).

Our portable computer has been manufactured in Germany and in use until the 80's, for the reordering of the items in the food retail business.
We had first in 1977 a lot of troubles, our computers loosing the data for unexplained reasons. We analysed the software, made some hardware modifications, but the problems were still here, until we received a letter from Intel (Santa Clara). In this letter our memories furnisher Intel recommended to us DO NOT USE anymore the CCD chips included in our design.

The earth receives a lot of rays coming from the space, the most hardest and destructive ones being the neutrino gamma rays. This kind of rays can destroy everything across there travel, with a frequency of about one ray per squared meter every second. The devastation on our body still remains marginal, the nucleus of some cells being perhaps destroyed, but they are some milliards.
But the size of a CCD memory chip is about one millimeter square, and during few hours of data entry there is a not marginal possibility a such ray can reach the chip.
In that case the CCD cell (which is in fact a CMOS transistor) can be reversed, transforming a bit from one to zero.
This is the reason why this kind of memory is used only for some particular purpose, the laser printers or the cameras per example.
Did you observed some time a red dot in your shot? this is the fault of a gamma-ray...

I suspect this is one of the reason of the trouble observed in the cars with the accelerator locked at the maximum, without any way to brake (just a suggestion).

I stop here because Bessler has no connection with this subject. May be the gamma-rays? Who knows? An old link in relation with the 'Siècle des Lumières': http://www.besslerwheel.com/forum/viewt ... 36c0#75510
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I cannot imagine why nobody though on this before, including myself? It is so simple!...
nicbordeaux
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Post by nicbordeaux »

Interesting pf, and true.

As to the "cruise control" lock incidents where a load of systems which would enable the car to stop (brakes, ignition...) fail simultaneously and the car drives at 130 kph whatever you do, a pal who is in the auto industry says it's using not enough wiring. that means one wire gets a whole load of different info from and to different components sent through it. If you check, you'll find that there are now more individual wires in the new models.
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re: Some corrections about the Apple success story

Post by LustInBlack »

nic,

wiring as in bus?

What it needs is simply Checksum on signals over the CANBUS.
Probably already that way now.
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re: Some corrections about the Apple success story

Post by path_finder »

Dear LustinBlack,
you wrote:What it needs is simply Checksum on signals over the CANBUS

This is a mandatory but always not sufficient.
The software must run in reversal mode: all control devices of the car must be enabled by a hardware monostable (this circuitry delivering a 'one shot' pulse) which will be retriggered continuously by the microprogram if running properly.
In the idle mode the microprogram does not generate the trigger: everything is locked.
When activated, the microprogram checks the integrity of the code and the memory every 10milliseconds and if correct, generates the triggering pulse enabling the motion of the car under the electronic control chain. For sure the frequency of the trigger must be quicker than the monostable pulse.
In case of trouble this pulse is not generated anymore and the hardware monostable make immediately free the electronic control chain and restore the manual commands.
This is another link with Bessler ('the horse behind the car')
I cannot imagine why nobody though on this before, including myself? It is so simple!...
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