This article about the discovery, debugging, and patch of a timing glitch on the Mars Pathfinder caught my fancy.
Its system architecture reminded me of the three-bus architecture of Masscomp “real time unix(TM)” machines, which I came to know intimately “back in the day” (84-86) as a side effect of writing the damn ‘theory of operations’ manuals for it. And anyway, as any of y’all as have read the first page of my Acts of the Apostles knows, I think the discovery-and-debugging of timing glitches is inherently interesting.
Outer space and spacecraft and actual hardware are Gary’s beat around Wetmachine, so here’s my respects, gov’nuh.
By the way, Google came up with an article on the Masscomp architecture but you need an ACM membership to read it so I’m not bothering with it, as my account has expired. If anybody has a Masscomp architecture diagram lying about, kindly post a link.
Related Posts:
- My Insanely Long Field Guide To The C-Band Spectrum Fight, And Why This Won't End In December. by Harold November 13, 2019 Like most everything else at the FCC these days, problems that have relatively simple and straightforward solutions turn into horrible complicated messes. Take the C-Band,…
- What the Eff, FAA? My Insanely Long Field Guide to the FAA/FCC 5G C-Band Fight. by Harold November 8, 2021 5G has been accused a lot of ridiculous things -- causing Covid, causing cancer, causing autism. This article provides a list of 9 separate conspiracy…
- Get Ready for the 2022 Season of Spectrum Wars! by Harold March 15, 2022 It isn't the sultry Regency drama of Bridgerton, the action psycho-drama of Moon Knight, or even the, um, whatever the heck Human Resources is. But…
- The Lessig Lawsuit (sung to the tune of "The Reynolds Pamphlet"). by Harold January 24, 2020 Cyberlaw Twitter has been mildly abuzz recently over the news that Professor Larry Lessig. Has decided to sue the New York Times for defamation. Specifically,…
- Mozilla v. FCC Reaction, or Net Neutrality Telenovela Gets Renewed For At Least Two More Seasons. by Harold October 7, 2019 I've been doing network neutrality an awfully long time. More than 20 years, actually. That was when we started arguing over how to classify cable…
- Auctioning a Chunk of 6 GHz Would be Phenomenally Bad Policy. by Harold March 4, 2020 Spectrum has once again become a hot topic in telecom. And in what is perhaps the oddest twist in this season's telenovela Spectrum Wars is…