Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!fernwood!vixie!pacbell!skivs!dr From: dr@skivs.UUCP (David Robins) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple Subject: Re: Apple II for scientific use Message-ID: <2850@skivs.UUCP> Date: 26 Dec 89 04:53:05 GMT References: <0.net.apple@pro-lep> <5862@wpi.wpi.edu> <1935@psuhcx.psu.edu> <6210@wpi.wpi.edu> <741@batman.moravian.EDU> <10048@microsoft.UUCP> <1989Dec22.172808.5372@eng.umd.edu> <1989Dec23.074210.27084@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> Reply-To: dr@skivs.UUCP (David Robins) Organization: Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, San Francisco, CA Lines: 60 At this research institute, the Apple II has been serving science since it was first introduced. We have an excellent team of people, including a senior programmer who can do ANYTHING with an Apple II, and an engineer who designs custom cards for any machine, especially the Apple II. These machines ran most of the experiments for a long time, although they are starting to get replaced by Suns, IBM 386's, and DECs. There is a huge amount of hours involved in the Apple software, however, so they keep running existing experiments on them. I myself designed a system to record eye movements by running the stimuli, and then analyze the movements in an organized fashion. My //e has 2 megs memory, a Titan accelerator card, a clock card, a Metrabyte data acquisition board, and a now unavailable Dataq Instruments Waveform Scroller card. This last card was $700, and permits incoming waveforms to scroll across the screen, up to 4 channels, in hardware, at up to several thousand points per second, to allow viewing of incoming data. (Now they only make it for the IBM, since only 4 people in the country bought them.) The programs are in Applesoft BASUC, compiled BASIC (Microsoft TASC compiler), and assembly language for the data acquisition. In addition, Beagle ProntoDOS and DiskQuik were used to get up the disk speed and RAM disk, and DOS-UP to move DOS to the language card. The advantage of using the Apple was that it had a simple operating system (DOS 3.3) which didn't interfere with the work I was doing, and could be easily modified in certain subroutines to help also. The wealth of Apple literature in books and magazines, and the many utility/hobby packages out there made it relatively easy to understand everything about the Apple and the monitor ROM routines, and thus work at the lowest level as needed. I couldn't do that with the Mac. I began doing it with the IBM, but I found precious little written that would help me work at the same kind of level. The Mac OS does a lot of functions in the background, which can screw up real-time data acquisition and control. The one real disadvantage of the Apple II was the inability to write to the disk while interrupts were enabled during data acquisition, limiting data to the available memory size, rather than to disk size. In another experiment, my Apple controlled a muscle stimulator to control eye muscle stimulation experiments for force and length. The resulting curves were then analyzed automatically, and the data written to disk files, which were then graphed automatically and overlaid. Without this, the task would have been impossible. The final graphical output for publication was cleaned up and fed to a pen plotter. In short, the learning time on the Apple was short and to the point, and was a good experience in lab scientific computer use. Other researchers are using the Apples to measure infant vision, run brain-wave communication devices, test visual functions of various types, measure and analyze eye muscle forces in the operating room, and control instruments. -- David Robins, M.D. (ophthalmologist / electronics engineer) The Smith-Kettlewell Institute of Visual Science, *** net: uunet!skivs!dr 2232 Webster St, San Francisco CA 94115 *** 415/561-1705 (voice) The opinions expressed herein do not reflect the opinion of the Institute!