Honda hydrogen car??

ccsial · Dec 17, 2006

Pat,

I believe just the filiments of the tubes would generate about 450,000 BTU. Then there is all the DC power supplies. The logic levels were +10 and -30 volts. The CPU's had 6 Mhz clocks, 256K of 32 bit memory, and a bunch of storage drums. Couldn't hold a candle to a PC today. I can imagine it would be hard to control the climate in there with no heat source. The 3rd floor was all the CRT screens (called rappi's for Random Axis Planned Position Indicators) and the main computer was on the 2nd floor. The 4th floor was offices and the cafeteria. I don't remeber a whole lot about the 1st floor. I think crypto was down there.

I worked at the Madison, WI SAGE building which is now an office building. I also worked at the Duluth, MN SAGE builing which is now a low security federal prison. I went into the Madison building and the several people I talked to had no idea what the building used to be.

This was off subject a bit but sure was fun.

Al

patrick_g · Dec 18, 2006

CCSIAL, "This was off subject a bit but sure was fun."

The topic was hydrogen cars. If you had had a hydrogen powered car you could have parked it at either of the SAGE installations you went to.

Not that long ago a program I redesigned and put into Ada to run on a DEC VAX computer replaced a dorm room refrigerator sized box called the AN-YUK-20, or yuck20. It had 64K of honest to goodness ferite doughnuts! It was programed in a Navy "HIGH LEVEL" language that was a high level assy lang.

If you recall "Hunt for Red October" or "Crimson Tide" the EAM (Emergency Action Messages) were delivered to the sub by SSIXS (Satellite Submarine Information eXchange System.) I was the manager of that software program for a period of time.

NOt impugning your command of math but are you sure the filaments would only peoduce half a megawatt?

Pat

ccsial · Dec 18, 2006

I worked for DEC for a few years too.

As I recall the filiments were about 100ma at 12V. I may be wrong. It's been over 40 years ago. (that's a scary thought) 1.2w x110000 = watts x 3.2 = 422400 BTU.

I have seen "Hunt for Red October" and "Crimson Tide". Great movies both. Sounds like you had a very fun job.

I'm not holding my breath for a hydrogen car. It will be fun to see what happens if I'm around that long. Time is going way too fast for me.

patrick_g · Dec 19, 2006

ccsiaL, Tell me about it brother. The older I get the faster time goes by. I can't even use the sweep second hand anymore as it is just a blur but that is OK the minute hand seems to be taking its place.

I confess I was a Clancy fan and thought for an insurance salesman he was a heck of a writer. One time when I was taking a class for SSIXS operators at Norfolk Navy Station in order to get the perspective of the users of "MY" system, I met Clancy and his publicist at the BX.

I was totally unaware of his impending visit but there were hoards of people (Naval personnel) milling about expectantly like adicts awaiting the opening of a methodone clinic when a stretch Caddy pulls up and there they were. He took a seat at a table and started autographing copies of his book. Having no book to be autographed and the shelves having been emptied by the morning feeding frenzy. I chatted up his publicist and mentioned I could give Clancy a list of the technical errors in his book relating to my field. The list was short and the greatest error was nearly trivial. The dude does have a sense of humor. I'm sure he laughed all the way to the bank. To his credit, he gets most of the facts right most of the time, probably better than many writers of fiction.

Probably the closest I will get to a hydrogen powered car is reading about how they will be THE standard type real soon now. Of course the Government can change that by tilting the playing field like they did for gasohol.

Alcohol for motor fuel isn't a totally BAD idea but the energy inputs required to produce it as we do now, mostly from corn, make it as consumptive of fossil fuel as if we just burned gasoline. Between the farmer's diesel and fertilizer the net reduction of fossile fuel consumption isn't a good thing. If the efforts to use celulose from prarie grass and such work out then maybe alcohol for motor fuel can be a good thing.

If the Fed sufficiently tilts the playing field in favor of Hydrogen it can be MADE to work even when it might not have a viable chance in a "free" market.

Meanwhilie I will keep on driving my Prius and loving it. I really enjoy this car and would like it whether or not it had the "status" of hybrid.

Pat

varmint · Dec 21, 2006

This exchange of tales about the early military computers was great! Who needs to watch TV for entertainment when there's TBN and stuff going who knows where! I too am suspect of hydrogen plants in people's back yards, but maybe there's some other method of moving soccer moms and their progeny around the suburbs yet to be invented. The idea of hybird cars and light trucks seems to be workable and here now, but just not being used enough. Maybe the battery manufactering process is nasty, and I just don't know it, but the cars work great. At least, ours has for the first 60,000 miles. More history stories, anytime!

patrick_g · Dec 21, 2006

varmint, So it seems, you too have a low entertainment threshold. OK, if you enjoy military computer history stuff, here are more tidbits.

1. Admiral Grace Hopper, one heck of a lady and a real computer pioneer is credited with coining the phrase "computer bug." They kept a log (ad seriatum) of all pertinent events to their computer operations. A significant malfunction was traced to a moth getting between some relay contacts. The moth (now a crispy critter) was Scotch taped to the log entry where it was proclaimed they found a bug in the system.

2. Adm. Hopper was a much in demand motivational speaker who was famous for handing out her coveted "Grace Hopper microseconds." She carried around a good supply of small gauge insulated wire cut to the length which would represent the length of wire that took an electronic signal a microsecond to travel end to end. There are many of us in the computer field who proudly retain and display a Grace Hopper microsecond.

3. The DoD had a competition among multiple teams comprised of many of the best and brightest from companies and institutions of higher learning. The goal was to develop a high level computer language for real time and embedded systems and critical programs and trusted systems to replace the hodge podge mix of various ill supported and often not widely known languages. The DoD was buying software and systems programed with software in about 500 computer languages but with variants and dialects there wre probably 1000 or more incompatible languages. To err may be human but to really fowl things up requires computers, and the hodge podge of languages only made things very significantly worse.

For more detail that I care to recount look here--->

The Ada Programming Language

Anyway, after the semifinals and restructuring and repartnering the finals were won by the "Green Team" and the language was named Ada after Ada the countess of Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron and first computer programmer. She worked with Charles Babbage programing his mechanical calculalting machine.

The Ada language manual became Mil-Std 1815 (1815 was the year of Ada's birth.) The original copies of the language reference manual Mil-Std 1815 were issued in a dark green cover in honor of the Green Team. An inside joke in the programing community when they see Ada spelled ADA is to make some comment about the American Dental Association working out of its area of expertise or some such.

I have met and or worked with or consulted with members of the Green Team. Heady group.

Pat

mjncad · Dec 22, 2006

And if I recall right, Admiral Hopper was responsible for the COBOL (COmbined Business Oriented Language) language that was used for many years by the banking and financial industries. Every now and then I still see want ads for COBOL programmers for companies that were a little slow in migrating their operations to modern languages and platforms.

My first compiled language that I learned was FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslator), which was used in the math and engineering fields. When I still made a buck as a CADD Dweeb, I was proficient in AutoCAD's AutoLISP language, which is a variant of LISP (LISt Processor) or as us CADD types prefer to call it...Lost In Stupid Parentheses.

Hard core computer geeks can program in Assembler, which is about as close to doing everything in binary as one can get.

BobRip · Dec 22, 2006

mjncad said:
And if I recall right, Admiral Hopper was responsible for the COBOL (COmbined Business Oriented Language) language that was used for many years by the banking and financial industries. Every now and then I still see want ads for COBOL programmers for companies that were a little slow in migrating their operations to modern languages and platforms.

My first compiled language that I learned was FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslator), which was used in the math and engineering fields. When I still made a buck as a CADD Dweeb, I was proficient in AutoCAD's AutoLISP language, which is a variant of LISP (LISt Processor) or as us CADD types prefer to call it...Lost In Stupid Parentheses.

Hard core computer geeks can program in Assembler, which is about as close to doing everything in binary as one can get.

I remember moving up from programming in binary to programming in hex. That was a big step.

patrick_g · Dec 26, 2006

MJNCAD, Actually sir, COBOL stands for COmmon Buisness Oriented Language. There was a Pentagon Committee connection in its origins but I can't confirm or deny Adm Hopper's connection or participation as I stayed well clear of all things COBOL and if it had not been a test question somewhere along the line I couldn't have "decoded" the acronym.

Except for an 8086 assembler class I tried to avoid bit fidling too but was not quite so successful. Ended up actually sort of liking the Z80 superset instructions, the souped up ones but thaought the 68K chip was nirvana and still think segments are for worms. Amazing what will pass for progress if IBM gets involved.

Pat

ccsial · Dec 26, 2006

Pat,

Ever hear of JOVIAL? We had a version of that for the Q7.

JOVIAL stands for "Jules Own Version of the International Algorithmic Language."

I love Z80's. I still do a lot of programming for the Rabbit Semiconductor 3000. Those are really neat high speed versions of the Z80 with many enhancements. I use their Dynamic-C which also allows assembler to be put in line with the C code. I do a lot of assembler work where the time is critical like for servo control loops or interrupt processing routines.

Writing this type of code is the favorite part of my business, and is almost like a hobby.