Today I started working at a company in Essen called IBAT (Ingenieurbüro Anselm
Tristram). One of my tasks was to program a machine for cutting window frames, based
on an Intel 8008, one of the
very first “embedded” applications.
It was an
unmitigated disaster. The participants were spread round the German-speaking region: the
hardware was built by GMP in Vienna (as far as I can tell nothing to do with the current GPM Management Consulting GesmbH), the customer was in Groß Mackenstedt in the north-west
of Germany, the builder of the equipment was in Braunschweig, and we were in Essen.
The program was stored in PROM, but
we didn't have a burner: to have the PROMs burnt we had to send them to Vienna along with a
paper tape of the new program. I found an alternative in Hamburg, only 220 km from Braunschweig,
where I had a couple of PROMs burnt.
As if that wasn't enough, we had problems with the hardware: the position was relative,
based on an optical encoder attached to the spindle that generated pulses as it rotated. I had
allowed for the fact that the spindle wouldn't stop immediately and continued counting until
it did. If the distance was more than a certain threshold, I then moved back. But the
encoder jittered when the spindle stopped, generating additional pulses. My software hadn't
allowed for that (and I don't know how it could have), and so it went backwards and forwards
without stopping.
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