Re: Vernier Universal Interface

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

Byron Winmill wrote:
> Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > If companies were mandated to support every shipped product for, say,
> > 25 years, we'd have lots of successful companies going out of business
>
>
> But you're talking about one extreme, and the industry is taking another.  
> It would be nice if there was some sort of middle ground, say 10 years.  
> As with anything else, that support may come at a cost.  Granted, it is 
> easy to see why many people would bypass that option with the price of 
> support frequently being comparable to the cost of replacement.

Bingo.

> > Though it's certainly not a mass market, there were a lot of Apple II's
> > used in college labs (and some industrial labs, too) to control complex
> > experiments.  Vernier made a good market in that area.
>
>
> I've been in quite a few university labs and have seen some quite obsolete 
> equipment, including computers.  Quite frequently the reason is quite 
> simple: even an XT can handle a few samples a second, and there is no 
> reason to dump money on fancy equipment if you only need a few samples a 
> second.  Yet I still have trouble "seeing" Apple II's in university 
> environments.  Perhaps it is that stigma of the Apple II being a hobbiest 
> and (primary/secondar) school computer.  That being said, I have seen one 
> that was in active use in a university lab (as of four years ago) -- but 
> always regarded it as more of a deviation than the norm.

That was an image fostered by IBM, "the down to business company".  ;-)

Although people who used their Apples primarily to play games may think
of it as an "expensive C=64", it was actually a very serious machine for
anyone who wanted to adapt it to a task.  Many Apple II's and clones
(often as bare boards) were used on manufacturing lines and in labs
to do testing, and collect data.

As with any other tool, different institutions had different
preferences.  But prior to 1982, there were few better options than
the Apple II, and even after the IBM PC gained accessories, the
Apple II was easier to program and interface with.  (And less expensive,
though that is seen by some as the kiss of death.  ;-)

These machines are capable of lots more than "a few samples a second"--
many A/D-D/A boards could easily support 10,000-30,000 samples per
second, and display the results quite handily.

Most lab automation problems are not "data heavy", but require constant
attention, either from a person or from a computer.  And if a stable
timebase is important, then a computer is the right choice.

-michael

Music synthesis for 8-bit Apple II's!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

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