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From: spinkert@pikes.Colorado.EDU (Scott Casto Pinkerton)
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle,sci.astro
Subject: Re: Computer Virus (Future Processors)
Message-ID: <2855@pikes.Colorado.EDU>
Date: 27 Oct 89 16:11:06 GMT
References: <1908@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> <126869@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Reply-To: spinkert@pikes.Colorado.EDU (Scott Pinkerton)
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Colorado, Denver
Lines: 31

>
>As I recall, the Command and Data Systems (CDS) computer(s) on Magellan
>and Galileo are rad-hard, CMOS RCA 1802 chips.  There was talk at the
>time (about 4 years ago) about moving to 8086-type processors
>manufactured by Harris (again, rad-hard requirements).

Portions of the Mars Observer Spacecraft are still hoping to use that
elusive Harris 80C86RH (Rad Hard) - I think it is planned to be a 
5 Mhz part.

>
>Of course, this would make it really easy to use IBM PCs, running
>MS-DOS, to do development.  Given larger memories coming, and standard
>tools to play with, one could imagine writing routines in "C" and doing
>final unit testing of the code on the PC, taking the resulting
>binaries, and integrating it into the spacecraft computer.
>

Only the most generic, and stand alone type testing will be done this
way.  I/O and interrupt processing being so different in the actual
flight computers.

>
>A more serious question:  what will be used for computing power on such
>probes in the near future?  Is it Harris or what?

Probably the Harris 80C86RH, there probably is a Mil-Std-1750A type of
a computer that is going rad-hard (I don't know of one in particular,
just speculation), and I've heard that there is a large effort to get
a rad hard 80386 available (I think this is being done to support
Space Station efforts).