Here's a potential suggestion. Use a Sharp OZ-730PC organizer. Light,
small, quite durable (I suppose the LCD could die on impact, but it might
keep on working despite that, and if you just want it for
control/telemetry, the LCD is unnecessary!) Costs about $60 new, but you
might get it for $40 on ebay. It has a serial port and so can receive the
telemetry. Hopefully it's light enough that you can send it up, but if
not you can always remove it from its case and just use the circuit board.
Runs off two AA batteries, which last a long time. The CPU is a ~9 MHz
Z80. It has 48K of available SRAM and a ton of flash for storing the
telemetry data to. Can be programmed in C with a free SDK available from
www.ozdev.com. Is mainly an organizer, but has a fair bit of software for
it by now (see www.ozdev.com and my own home.att.net/~apruss)
The down-side: The SDK runs best under Windows or Linux. One could run
it under a Windows emulator on a Mac, or one could port the SDK to the Mac
(in fact the SDK itself runs a CP/M-80 emulator, and there are CP/M-80
emulators for Macs, so with not too much effort it should be possible to
get the SDK running on a Mac, without any programming). There is
currently no way to upload programs from a Mac to the Sharp unit, unless
the Mac can run Linux, but perhaps the source code for the Linux uploader
could be ported to MacOS or the Windows uploader could be run under an
emulator. However, if you can do the software development on a Windows or
Linux system, upload from there, once the program is on the Sharp unit
your program can communicate with a Mac in the field by the serial port,
of course--that's all up to your programming. If HyperCard can do serial,
then that would be the easiest on the Mac side.
Alex
--
Dr. Alexander R. Pruss || e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Philosophy Department || home page:
Georgetown University || www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ap85
Washington, DC 20057 ||
U.S.A. ||
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Philosophiam discimus non ut tantum sciamus, sed ut boni efficiamur."
- Paul of Worczyn (1424)
--
Compact Macs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and...
SPECIAL LIST PRICES - Replacement Apple CDROMs from $19.99, MacOS 8.5 CD $79.99
PPC 5400/200Mhz 16/1.6GB/CD/ENET/L2 $119, 5+ for $99 <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html>
Compact Macs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/compact.shtml>
The FAQ: <http://macfaq.org/>
Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Archive:<http://www.mail-archive.com/compact.macs%40mail.maclaunch.com/>
Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
