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From: smith@sctc.com (Rick Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Subject: Re: IBM 7565 alternative controller ?
Message-ID: <1991Jun10.204452.17182@sctc.com>
Date: 10 Jun 91 20:44:52 GMT
References: <1991Jun10.170410.6368@eng.ufl.edu>
Organization: SCTC
Lines: 32

stef@joker.mil.ufl.edu writes:

>In our lab we have an IBM 7565 hydraulic-actuated gantry robot.
>This robot is controlled by a wardrobe-sized computer called "Series/1"
>based upon a 20-years-technology which has at least these
>undesirable features:

>- low performance
>- somewhat unreliable electronics
>- no support for interconnection and networking.

The last point overstates the situation. The 7565's have no
support, period. IBM donated one to U. Minnesota about 5 years
ago and refused to provide _any_ support about a year after it
was delivered (it "only" broke down twice in that period). I
used it for my dissertation research, and it suffered from a
unrecoverable failure of some sort about 3 months after I finished.

For connectivity, I established communications through the console
serial port. Crude, but effective. You need to be able to interpret
a handful of oddball IBM terminal escape codes. The Series/1 hampered
performance, but I was trying for "intelligence" rather than speed.

>Does anyone know of a controller for the 7565 running on a different
>platform either supporting the same language (AML) or a  different one ?

My alma mater would probably also be interested in such a thing.
They have other manipulators, but none of them had quite as
nice a suite of sensors.

Rick.
smith@sctc.com    Arden Hills, Minnesota.