From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Jan 31 21:52:49 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id VAA25596 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 31 Jan 1996 21:52:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au [129.127.96.120]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id VAA25582 for ; Wed, 31 Jan 1996 21:52:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from msmith@localhost by genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (8.6.12/8.6.9) id QAA22783; Thu, 1 Feb 1996 16:36:25 +1030 From: Michael Smith Message-Id: <199602010606.QAA22783@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Subject: Re: Watchdog timers (was: Re: Multi-Port Async Cards) To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 16:36:25 +1030 (CST) Cc: phk@critter.tfs.com, hackers@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: <2257.823145561@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Jan 31, 96 07:32:41 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Jordan K. Hubbard stands accused of saying: > > If you're going to go to all that trouble, why not simply add a > low-cost CPU and a serial port to it? Then you could also hook an 68SEC811E2 would be my choice (for obvious reasons 8). You still need a fair amount of hardware to bridge this to the ISA bus. > external modem to it and use it as a full-blown dial-in diagnostic > port for stopping the system in its tracks and sniffing around (or > poking at the corpse). I'd imagine the costs of laying out and > fabricating the boards would add such a "knee" in the cost curve that > another $100 in parts for several orders of magnitude's worth of extra > potential functionality would be a more than reasonable trade off. $100 in parts would buy you far more than what you're talking about there 8) > Pyramid did/does something like this for their RISC monsters. They Indeed. Anyone know anything about the trailblazers they used? (I have one gathering dust somewhere; RMM1800 if I remember correctly 8) > have a 68K machine driving a color console which provides the fanciest > interface for grubbing around in the internals of a machine/UNIX OS > that I've ever seen! The only drawback to theirs was that they didn't Hmm, I'd offer the Multimax diagnostics as another winner; they even went so far as to mandate a VT100 emulation that did 132 columns. Unless someone knows where Thomas Westbom is these days, I don't think we'll get that onto this card 8) > Needless to say, it would also run FORTH. :-) Now _that_ is a gratuitous waste of money. The 811 already lets you burn it on the fly, what more could you want? 8) > Jordan -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control (ph/fax) +61-8-267-3039 [[ ]] "wherever you go, there you are" - Buckaroo Banzai [[