hey guys
I just tuned in to the discussion about using interbase in tanks because MS took
too long to reboot.
I have had a lot to do with getting hardware to survive harsh industrial
environments, and my two cents worth is that the gear could be sheilded from any
EMP, and that the physical shock should not offer any reason to affect the
electronics (long term it tends to shake parts off boards, but rebooting wouldnt
affect that). The only problem comes from mechanical devices (relays shake to
the wrong state, disk drive servos cant keep on track).
But one wouldnt use a mechanical HDD in that environment, since battery backed
RAM is pretty cheap. There is plenty of knowhow to get electronics working in
modern tanks and aircraft, so it sounds like a story created in some marketting
latenight beer session.
bon velocity
Leo
BJ Wilson wrote:
> Happy Day.
>
> Bill Karwin was talking about this at the Inprise Conference in Surfer's
> Paradise in 98. He confirmed that the US Army was indeed using Interbase in
> tanks and that the reboot time was the main factor in the decision. He said
> that the database was being used for logging of the tank's activity and not
> for targeting or battle theatre data. He didn't say anything about an EMP
> but he did say that the sheer impact of the recoil was enough to screw up a
> lot of the gear in the tank. I suppose that if you hit your PC
> extraordinarily hard it could crash, but I'm not about to strap mine to the
> base of a cannon to test this theory. Apparently they have a big red RESET
> lever that they throw after the shot is fired. I guess that what happens
> between a shot being fired and the completion of Interbase bootup just
> doesn't get logged.
>
> I have a VERY vague recollection that Bill said that the tank PC was running
> Linux. I have an even more vague memory (this is getting very tenuous) of
> Bill saying that the "Interbase for Linux" development was largely driven by
> the army connection.
>
> Cheers.
> BJ...
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Simon Mahony <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: Multiple recipients of list database <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Tuesday, 11 April 2000 14:12
> Subject: Re: [DUG-DB]: What cheap databases are any good?
>
> Back to you Nic. How about tracking this one down. I remember Richard Vowles
> telling us this one first, so he may know where the story came from. My
> recollection is that the shock of the gun firing caused the computers to
> reboot (no mention of EMP), and that the computer was used for targetting,
> and thermal image recognition, etc, hence the DB. Still, who knows. The
> original story had MS SQL Server as the Army's original choice, and
> Interbase being brought in to replace it because SQL Server (in those days)
> took several minutes to reboot.
>
> Simon.
>
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>
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