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From: jdeitch@umiami.ir.miami.edu (Jonathan Deitch)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: New Shuttle Computers
Message-ID: <1991Mar6.221657.8011@umiami.ir.miami.edu>
Date: 7 Mar 91 03:16:56 GMT
References: <1991Mar4.202334.22118@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> <1991Mar5.013344.7971@umiami.ir.miami.edu> <1991Mar06.063034.12021@nowhere.uucp> <1991Mar7.010752.10632@agate.berkeley.edu>
Organization: Univ of Miami IR
Lines: 26

jwl@garnet.berkeley.edu (James Wilbur Lewis) writes:
> In article <1991Mar06.063034.12021@nowhere.uucp> sking@nowhere.uucp (Steven King) writes:
>>
>>   With the 230 lbs they saved they could put a couple hundred meg disk
>> array on each CPU and...  
> 
> ....watch their data get turned into a worthless pile of iron oxide if
> the spacecraft changes attitude while the drives are spinning!
> 
> -- Jim Lewis

Hmm. Never thought of that.  I'm still in the dark ages (using an Apple II)
so I've not much firsthand experience with hard drives but I understand they are
incredibly finicky and it seems perfectly plausible that not only would
an attitude change wreck the drives but the vibrations of liftoff probably
wouldn't do much good either.

Anyway, since we're discussing technology too new for NASA, what
about optical drives - a CD-ROM drive (apart from being slow) would be
perfect for a non changing program like the STS uses.

- Jonathan      (yes the person responsible for non-volative S-RAM !!)
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