erc@pai.UUCP (Eric Johnson) (11/19/88)
[ .. ]
Query for the net experts and those great Apple people:
Prime Automation is interested in examining the Macintosh as
an operator station for factory automation systems. The Mac seems
to have some advantages, such as
* Ease of learning (a very important point for factory
operations where many of the workers have never used
a computer before)
* Integration of text and graphics for display purposes
* HyperCard and the ability to link together training
and maintenance information
* Easy integration with scanners and CD-ROM disks
to allow plant personnel to place their manuals on-line.
* I really enjoy using the Mac and I hate PCs.
The questions I have are how well does the Mac work with the
following:
* Ethernet networking (TCP/IP - to communicate with Unix
hosts and PC stations). We would like a Berkeley socket
C program library for TCP/IP (if we can get one for the PC,
I hope we can get one for the Mac). I read about Apple's
upcoming TCP package. Does anyone have information on this
or any other packages? Are these real packages or Real Soon
Now?
* Serial communication to factory floor devices. My Mac seems
to work fine with serial communicatiosn. How about
background communication? Would we lose characters
coming in the serial port if it is only read in
the background?
* Macintosh co-processor boards that could acquire
data in real time and then upload and download data to and
from the Mac. The Mac devotes most of its effort toward the
user interface (which is only natural -- the Mac look and feel
provides a powerful interface). We would need the Mac to
run communications in the background, and go through a number
of user-specified actions (such as checking for alarm
conditions, and so on) also behind the scenes. Would it be possible
to do this activity through an INIT task? How hard are INITs to
write? What kind of co-processors are there (such as
transputer boards, the "MacCray" board, as I believe
it was called, etc.) that could run TCP/IP and serial
communications in the background? We would need the
co-processor to essentially run in parallel with the
Mac's 680X0 CPU. How much do these boards cost?
What kind of software libraries are available? How
do these co-processors communicate with the Mac?
Are these boards available now? If anyone has experience with
Mac co-processors, please send me info on your experiences.
How well did it go? Did it work?
* Industrialized Macs, especially the keyboard and mouse
(I recently saw an ad for a Mac industrialized keyboard
that had a built-in joy-stick to replace the mouse).
How sort of units are available? How about industrialized
SCSI hard disks, SE, II, etc.?
If you have an information with the above, or any experiences to
share, please send me email (since this is rather specialized,
I can post a summary if people want it). If any Apple people reading
the net want to refer me to someone else in Apple, please do so.
Thank you very much,
-Eric F. Johnson
Prime Automation, Inc.
erc@pai.mn.org
--
Eric F. Johnson | Phone +1 612-894-0313 | Are we
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