Xref: utzoo comp.databases:4145 sci.electronics:8637 comp.sys.mac:42402
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!usc!apple!fox!portal!cup.portal.com!mmm
From: mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson)
Newsgroups: comp.databases,sci.electronics,comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: electronic parts Inventory control
Message-ID: <24108@cup.portal.com>
Date: 16 Nov 89 06:47:39 GMT
References: <708@crash.cts.com>
Distribution: usa
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 14

On a related subject, when I worked at a company that made graphics boards,
we had an engineer that designed a board for use on either big-endian
or little-endian Multibus systems (i.e. Motorola vs. Intel).  To allow the
same board to be used for either, he had two versions of one of the PAL's
on the board.

Over in the manufacturing area, they used the checksum of the PAL's to
track programmable logic in the inventory system.  The checksum could
easily be read with a Data I/O programmer, and the checksum was a four-digit
hex number, so this method worked really well, for a while.

Unfortunately, the two versions of the PAL for this particular board BOTH
HAD THE SAME CHECKSUM.  This is the only case where that ever happened.
That really caused a lot of headaches!