[COFF] The Third Ronnie's SDI's embedded systems

[COFF] The Third Ronnie's SDI's embedded systems

[wobblygong]

Hi

This isn't precisely Unix-related, but I'm wondering about the Third
Ronnie's SDI's embedded systems. Is there anyone alive who knows just
what they were? I'm also wondering, since the "Star Wars" program
seemed to go off the boil at the end of the "Cold War", and the
embedded systems were made with the US taxpayer's dollar, whether or
not they are now public domain - since iirc, US federal law mandates
that anything made with the taxpayer's dollar is owned by the taxpayer
and is thus in the public domain. I'm wondering about starting a
Freedom of Information request to find all of that out, but I don't
quite know how to go about it. (FWVLIW, I'm a fan of outer space
exploration (and commercial use) and a trove of realtime, embedded
source code dealing with satellites would be a treasure indeed. It'd
raise the bar and lower the cost of entry into that market.)

Also, more Unixy, what status at the time were the POSIX realtime
standards, and what precise relation did they have to Unix?

Thanks

Wesley Parish

[COFF] The Third Ronnie's SDI's embedded systems

[krewat]

I highly doubt sensitive or classified military information would be 
given to the public, just because they "own" it. ;)


Somewhat SDI related side-story:

My only experience with Apollo/Domain OS systems was at a defense 
contractor I was consulting for back in the mid-to-late 90's. I was the 
Sun system administrator for the Mechanical and Electrical Engineering 
departments, and because I knew VMS somewhat, I also took on some VAX 
work from them too... Mostly keeping old systems running like 
VAXstations and a micro-VAX or two, plus an 8350.

Anyway, one day, an older wizened engineer came to me to ask if I could 
take a look at something. He was very agitated. They had an old Apollo 
setup, a few diskless workstations, plus a "file server" that actually 
had one or two disk drives in it. But still, basically a workstation. 
They had more workstations "back in the day" but they all died one by 
one, and were not on support so they just threw them away.

The file server had died years back, and the workstations were of course 
useless, but the older engineers held onto them for some reason, mostly 
nostalgia I think.

Checking out the file server, the power supply was obviously dead, so I 
pulled a power supply from one of the remaining workstations, and it 
fired right up. After figuring out the token ring wiring, and jumping 
wires where workstations had been removed, I powered on one of the 
workstations, and it booted and ran just fine.

The old engineering wizard went back to his notes, found his password 
and everything else he needed, and proceeded to find a few files that 
were obviously very important to him. I don't remember the transfer 
method, maybe it was floppies... The system certainly wasn't hooked up 
to any other network in the building.

Anyway, he was very happy. He explained the files were PCB layouts for 
some old project they were involved in, and needed the files to prove 
the work they did, so they could get paid.

It was an SDI project. ;)

Moral of the story, defense contractors were still reaping the rewards 
of SDI, at least 10-15 years later.

This was at Loral Fairchild Systems in Syosset, NY, an east-coast 
division (and originally corporate headquarters ) of Fairchild Systems 
of California, which used to be Fairchild Imaging. Bought by Lockheed 
Martin a few years later. And then sold off to BAE after that. I only 
stuck around until 2000 or so, just before the sell-off to BAE.

When I first went to interview for the consulting gig back in 1993, I 
was shown around to meet all the engineers. They all had drawings of 
PCBs on their cubicle walls... they were all round boards. I hit it off 
with one of the electrical engineers right away, and I asked him what 
they were. He looked around, and said in a low voice: "They fit into a 
missile". Later on I came to realize they were working on proposals for 
THAADS. One of their hurdles was calibrating CCDs for IR use. Every cell 
in their CCDs were slightly different in terms of light response. The 
engineer I had hit it off with was the principal engineer responsible 
for coming up with a method of calibrating IR CCDs all in hardware.

art k.


On 1/21/2020 11:39 PM, Wesley Parish wrote:
> Hi
>
> This isn't precisely Unix-related, but I'm wondering about the Third
> Ronnie's SDI's embedded systems. Is there anyone alive who knows just
> what they were? I'm also wondering, since the "Star Wars" program
> seemed to go off the boil at the end of the "Cold War", and the
> embedded systems were made with the US taxpayer's dollar, whether or
> not they are now public domain - since iirc, US federal law mandates
> that anything made with the taxpayer's dollar is owned by the taxpayer
> and is thus in the public domain. I'm wondering about starting a
> Freedom of Information request to find all of that out, but I don't
> quite know how to go about it. (FWVLIW, I'm a fan of outer space
> exploration (and commercial use) and a trove of realtime, embedded
> source code dealing with satellites would be a treasure indeed. It'd
> raise the bar and lower the cost of entry into that market.)
>
> Also, more Unixy, what status at the time were the POSIX realtime
> standards, and what precise relation did they have to Unix?
>
> Thanks
>
> Wesley Parish
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> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
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>