PC-based test anniversaries
Brad Thompson, Contributing Technical Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 6/1/2005 2:00:00 AM
Anniversaries and waveform glitches share attributes of sneaking past when you don't pay attention, only becoming evident when you try to figure out what happened.
For example, 2004 marked the 30th anniversary of "Build the Mark-8 . . .Your Personal Minicomputer." Written by Jon Titus, former editor of and current contributor to Test & Measurement World and in my opinion one of microcomputing's too-often overlooked pioneers, the article appeared in Radio-Electronics magazine's July 1974 issue and described what's arguably the first expandable microcomputer.
Popular Electronics magazine for December 1975 featured a cover story written by Ed Roberts, founder of Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS). Roberts' company, a struggling model-rocket accessory manufacturer, offered the Altair 8800 microcomputer as a kit. A casual observer would immediately note its similarities to a minicomputer—front-panel data-entry switches, lots of status indicator lights, and an internal expansion bus enabling custom configurations.
The Altair's S-100 bus offered a cheap alternative to minicomputers and an open architecture that encouraged design of specialty boards aimed at data-acquisition and test markets. Although primitive by today's standards, S-100 boards found their way into everything from experimental agricultural-machine controls to automated cash dispensers, and inspired today's PC-based test, measurement, and control industry.
Using surface-mount components, you could shrink the functions contained on a 5.27-by-10-in. S-100 board—or an entire S-100 system—to fit onto a business card.
Nowadays, S-100 systems are history and PCs rule the market. Shrinkage continues, and truly tiny PCs are becoming available. For years to come, existing investments in support software and low-cost hardware will keep PCs in test applications.
Beyond that, I envision ad hoc test systems assembled from domino-sized wireless data-acquisition "points," all chirping away like crickets in a woodpile and relaying data to each other and a central host and datalogging system.
And over coffee, an engineer will say, "Hey, think what we could do if we put a bunch of these little guys on a 5-by-10-in. circuit board. . . ."
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