In the mid-90s, I was working for an OEM of large industrial machinery. I was about nine months out of engineering school and had just completed my first major project. This particular project included the installation of the first PC-based HMI that my company (and the customer) had ever used. This HMI was a very complex system for its day.
The system also had extreme environmental challenges due to the shock, vibration, and dirt. We ended up with the Allen-Bradley T60 computer for hardware, which was about the only system on the market that would survive more than a week. I was also pushing the envelope of DOS and the available hardware, so much so that I needed a third-party memory manager to manually allocate each program to make it work.
One of the key features of our new PC-based HMI was that the customer could now extract fault information from the machine to analyze it in the office, and even store long fault and maintenance histories. Due to the equipment’s location, network cabling to the office was not possible and wireless connectivity was still a number of years off. However, "Sneaker-Net" (or in this case, "Steel-Toe-Boot-Net") was a breakthrough solution. The ability to save the fault data to a floppy disk and load it back to the computer in the office was a major development for our customers.
After a lengthy onsite commissioning process, I returned to the office and everything seemed to be going well for the customer. But that changed. I started getting phone calls from the electrical maintenance supervisor saying that the information downloading process was no longer working. This started an in-depth troubleshooting process. Was the raw data good on the HMI? Yes, shutting down the graphics still allowed the raw data to be read on the hard drive.
Was it copying correctly? Yes, the files could be reread after the download. It appeared to work every time, but the files were totally unreadable in the maintenance office. We even swapped out the floppy drives to see if the vibration on the machine misaligned the drive heads.
After going back and forth like this for some time with no solution, the only thing left was to walk through the process and see if there was anything anywhere that could be corrupting the data. I asked the electrical supervisor to tell me step-by-step what he did. He verified a freshly formatted disk -- good. He put the disk in the HMI drive -- good. He went through the proper download process -- good. He waited for the drive light to go out -- good. He removed the disk and put it in his shirt pocket -- oops.
IF you read about it, or was told about tremors & data corruption being from a "source" on the internet, it's probably a bunch of malarkey!!!!! Just like IVORY soap commercials of decades ago, "It's 99.9% pure, so it gfloats!" Well, what you read on the internet is also 99.9% "PURE" ....... pure B.S., that is!!!
No actually this was told to me by a my boss shortly after he came to the company for which I worked it the late 70's. This was a time when companies were first moving into computerized inventories etc. We were advised to always keep our back-up files at a remote location. I asked why and was given the tremors explanation. He claimed to have experienced the corrupted data/tremors relationship.
As to Ivory soap, I recall a study in the early 70's, I think by Consumers Union that the claim was true. All Ivory were claiming was that it was soap. No detergents and no by products or impurities, and that claim was factual. Then again that was 40+ years ago so I may be in error.
As far as Data Corruption & Tremors, is concerned, since you reference many decades ago as the reference, maybe it was because disk crashes were very prevalent back then. The read/write head technology wasn't as mechanically secure as it is nowadays, and any low frequency vibration could cause the head to literally plop down (a computerese technical term!) onto the spinning platter, literally causing it to dig into the highly polished & coated surface, thus causing the "crash".
Cncerning the IVORY soap commercials, going back as long as I can remember into the 1940s, that was their slogan ...... "So pure, it floats". And, you're exactly correct .... it was to counter some "modern" soap products that included perfumes, and other additives which some claimed detracted from the purity of the soap product. I guess IVORY still floats .... we don't use it ..... have "graduated" to more modern alternatives. Oh, well, time marches on!!
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
To save this item to your list of favorite Design News content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
If you found this interesting or useful, please use the links to the services below to share it with other readers. You will need a free account with each service to share an item via that service.
Tweet This
7 
