 |
|
|
|
|
|
| The HSC-5100 computer was quite a powerful embedded computer for 1990. It had a total of a megabyte of memory during the time when the typical PC had the same. |
| The HSC-5102 was a complete computer with the HSC-5100 PCB mounted on a metal panel with a power supply and a 640x480 monochrome LCD on the other side and a touch panel. The package was then mounted on sock knitting machines. The computer was connected via ten conductor ribbon cables to I/O cards to interface to the mechanics of the knitting machine |
| Pre-USB |
To communicate with the I/O cards an optically isolated serial interface was developed. It communicated at 2M bits per second. The I/O card would hold in a reset state when the clock from the computer was not present keeping the machine in a safe state. Much of the architecture used is now seen in the ubiquitous USB interface. |
| Programmable I/O |
The I/O cards used LCAs (Logic Cell Array) that were programmed at startup time. This allowed for the design to be updated in the software. |
| Flash Memory |
Flash was new technology and only starting to take part of the optically erasable or one-time programmable memory market. The program could be updated via the network. |
| Optical Network |
The machines were in a harsh environment and we developed a fiber optic network using plastic fibers. We could monitor the machines, update the software, and update the sock patterns and programs over the network. |
| LCD controller |
VRAM (Video RAM) and an LCA was used for the display controller. Black, white, and grey was achieved by modulation techniques on a display that was black and white only. |
| Touch Panel |
The touch panel used an 8 bit analog to digital converter which allowed us to resolve a 256 by 256 grid. However, with numerous issues to resolve and limited processing time to allocate to the touch panel, we had an 8 by 8 grid in software. |
| Diagnostic LEDs |
A virtual trademark of our projects was the cluster of four red and four green diagnostic LEDs. After all, looking at a computer does not let you know if it is running unless there is something that shows activity. At power on a dance would occur that would show the self-test progress. During operation each LED would blink in sequence to show that the system was actually running. Errors would flash an error code. |
|
|
|
