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Atari 800XL Used For Heart Diagnostics 121

Posted by Hemos from the interesting-application dept.
fuxoft writes: "Even today, 8-bit Atari can save your life! This article (with photographs) reports that Atari 800XL is still used in one of the biggest Czech hospitals, for diagnostics of children with heart problems. Even here, in the Czech Republic, where the technology is not always 100% up-to-date, this is very weird indeed."
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Atari 800XL Used For heart Diagnostics More

Atari 800XL Used For heart Diagnostics

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  • What I meant was:
    those damn c [utoronto.ca] z [utoronto.ca] e [utoronto.ca] c [utoronto.ca] h [utoronto.ca] s! [utoronto.ca]
  • Even today, 8-bit Atari can save your life!
    from a couple articles below, Java runs on 8-bit machines

    This all adds up to one thing: coffee can and will save your life. (I knew it all along..)

  • I know a number of clinical applications that either use old machines or are so simple most slashdotters would laugh at them. One example is a system that calculates transfusions for "feeding" prematurely born infants. This is a very simple perl program that generates a bunch of HTML pages, but it saves the staff a lot of time and has reduced errors by a large factor (input errors are still possible, even despite quite intelligent error checking).
    What kind of machine do you think this program needs? A P4 at 1.5GHz? Come on, reaction times in the seconds range are completely sufficient. It's much more important that it runs reliably and is never down when it is needed. Why replace such a machine?

    The other part is interfaces. It is extremely difficult and expensive to get hold of data from medical devices. So when you have managed to build such a system, you want to keep it alive as long as possible in order not to have to pay for expensive new devices and --- on top of that --- a means of getting to the data, instead of only having it displayed or printed out.

    So this doesn't really surprise me at all. And it is a nice example of real good an economic use of ressources. I would really like to see much more of this kind.

  • Who volunteers to port this to Linux? (Score:4)

    by emil ( 695 ) on Sunday December 17, 2000 @06:19AM (#553778)

    I understand and sympathize with the view towards old hardware of "don't fix what's not broken." We all get more than a little sentimental for the hardware we used in the "old days," however long ago that may be.

    However, the author was contacted because the equipment was malfunctioning. Since Intel hardware is so inexpensive, running this application on a P90 with Linux makes much more sense than using such an "exotic" piece of hardware.

    The Free Software/Open Source community should step up to the plate and port this application - it would be hard to conceive of a more valliant effort for our talents. I'd certainly be willing to do it.

  • Good God man! 21 foot monitors? Or am I suffering from a form of Spinal Tap syndrome?

  • I ran a board for 8 years on an old Atari 800 (using Basic XL), and during that time it ran perfectly for *months* between reboots with nary a problem. Those problems that did occasionally crop-up were usually file-system errors having to do with the floppy drives (file # mismatch etc), and they were rare enough. Nex
  • It's normal for americans to think of other coutries as prehistoric. Maybe they should look at their own country from outside to get a real perspective of things. Welcome to the real world!
  • You have not yet read the FAQ. Please do so before asking again.
    Does the site have banner ads? No.
    Is the site highly likely to get slashdotted? Yes.
    I have read the faq. Just a very long time ago.
  • I think porting the application might be a little more problematic that you first realize.

    They joystick ports on an atari 800xl were pretty complex for their time. Each one had 5 binary I/O channels, and 2 8 bit DAC/ADC channels.
    It sounds to me from the story that the sensors they are using are dependant on the behavior of the ADCs in the atari's joystick ports. To port the system to a more modern machine, you would have to find hardware that can duplicate that function.
    --

  • ...always the greatest.

    Remember the recent Slashdot discussion of the 486-based computer used in the Hubble telescope? Quite a few people seemed amazed at NASA's use of such "obsolete" technology -- but indeed, the 486 was a reliable, trusted tool for the job.

    If the hospital in question is getting good reesults from an Atari 800, why on Earth should they upgrade? For that matter, why do so many tehcnical people insist on living at the bleeding edge, when they could get just as much done (and maybe more?) with yesterday's tested tools.

    I drive a 15-yo truck, because it works well and doesn't cost me much. Yeah, I could go blow $25-45,000 on a new Suburban -- but my old truck does just fine, thank you, and I'd rather spend my money on something better. I'll bet that hospital doesn't have the money or technical resources to "upgrade" to a Linux box and a new solution -- what they have works, so why change it?

    Don't buy into the Microsoft mentality. If Windows 95 is working, why upgrade to Win ME? If I'm going to upgrade the kernel on my Linux box, I need to have a defined reason (USB support, for example) -- but it makes no sense to compile a new kernel simply because the version numbers have been incremented!

    If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

  • anyone want my computer? I'm going to find an Atari! Screw Quake3 and CounterStrike, Pacman is where real challenege is at! l33t p4cm4n 5k1[[Z!!!
  • Ok then, ADC's are very very simple to do. The Atari's were (iirc) simple resistance measurement types, not proper ADC's at all.
    Find hardware to duplicate it? Look in your (insert favourite electronic supplier) catalogue!
  • dear mr anonymous coward, its spelled PORTO rico, not peuto rico, u dumbass lol
    <flamebait>
    I think it's spelt PUERTO rico,dumbass.
    </flamebait>
  • Nearly 25 years after its release and with less memory and a slower CPU than any Atari a Sinclair ZX81 still makes just as good a doorstop as it ever did.
    25 years? Since when is 2000 - 25 = 1981?
  • In 1986 a Therac 25, a radiation therapy machine, killed three people by giving them a 100x overdose of radiation. It was caused by faulty software.

    --
  • In this particular case there IS a problem with the technology used. Cassette-recorder based storage is inherently unreliable, and its XC12 incarnation has enough unreliability to drive you insane. Could be somewhat rectified by Turbo2000, though...
    --
  • For an even more obscure fact, the space shuttle, which hasn't been remodeled in over 20 years, still runs on 4-bit Intel processors. (I would like to say it is the 4044.)
  • I would submit that it IS indeed wierd to see an 800XL still in use like this. But it is NOT at ALL wierd to see the technology within.

    Old computer: Wierd

    Old CPU, OTOH: NOT wierd... actually, VERY common.

    For something like medical data processing, you wouldn't hack an old Atari into the job. You'd build dedicated hardware with, perhaps, the same CPU as the old Atari at it's heart.

    Since I was never a big Atari geek, I'll use another example I'm more familiar with, myself.

    You VERY rarely see an Apple II, or a Mac 128 in common use anymore; especially not in anything mission critical (I'd call hospital equipment pretty mission critical).

    BUT...

    Crack open half of the embedded systems in the world, and I can all but GUARANTEE that you will find the venerable MOS 6502 (CPU for the Apple II), and Motorola 68000, all over the place still.

    john
    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

    Haiku:
    I am not a drone.
    Remove the collective if

  • Well I meant some type of small cpu + memory + flashram that I could use for all kinds of things like DNS DHCP masq Quake etc. Think of an Atari 800 with a Duron cpu, 64 megs of memory, Disk On Module.

    I could load up anything into the Disk On Module and have something that would survive a hard boot without fans, hard drives, fsck and a lot of power.

  • I remember around 1984 my father was looking to buy me a computer (I was probably about five then) and we went to look at a used Atari. The seller plugged it in, played a few games on it, and showed us how it worked. My father decided he liked it and was going to buy it. Right when the guy picked the Atari up to package it (I believe it was an 800) something fell out of the case, I think it was a screw. My dad asked him to plug it back in again to make sure it was okay, only to find out it wouldn't power on anymore.

    Right afterwards my dad went and bought me a c64 with tape drive and everyone lived happily ever after.

    Just thought I'd share that moment with everyone :)

  • I used to program for the Atari 8-bits. It is plenty fast enough to do what they want it to do, and those joystick ports are extremely easy to program for. In fact the 6502 was very easy to program for in general if you don't mind only having two registers and an accumulator.

    As far as replacement equipment goes, you can pick up a replacement 800XL (or 400, 800 or any of the XL or XE series, depending on the program's memory requirements) for less than $10 on e-Bay. $100 for some Intel equipment is a little pricey for a Czech hospital.

    The only thing I don't understand is why they use a cassette player instead of a disk drive (a few $ on e-Bay). My only guess is that's the way DoDDS-Europe donated it and they never looked any further. I was part of donations of military equipment to hospitals former east bloc countries in the early 90s, and that is how it often went (no jokes about why hospitals need tanks, the military here had beaucoup excess medical and other equipment after the drawdown).

    Atari trivia: did anyone else notice that the first Terminator's POV vision had 6502 assembler getting listed down the right side?

  • It becomes completely non-weird if you stop thinking of it as a desktop machine. They have a test instrument which contains a processor. The processor is only as powerful as it has to be. Nothing surprising about it.
  • My guess,

    They origonally built this machine to work with the Atari, it died, grabbed one surplus when the US school tossed it and there it is.

    At work we just retired an XT based system built in 1984 for in house testing. It was pushing product until the day we pulled the plug and upgraded the system. We actually kept an XT bone yard to keep the system running it's last few years. During the upgrade we kept the instrument and just replaced some of the dated electronics with the current product's [acton-research.com] brains.

    Old computers never die, just leak PCB's everywhere...
    TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
  • Just get 'em lots of Ataris. If I still had mine I would just send it. You can find these things in your local thrifty for $5.00! Less if they don't know what it is.

    Once you factor this in the Atari looks good again. They probably have a very well defined procedure that steps them through this process. The amount of learning and un-learning involved in changing hardware is probably not worth it to them. They might very well consider a more capable machine a waste as it could do other things the Atari can't.

  • About that tape drive... I can't be any old tape drive. They used some special encoding on the tape. Not just audio. I remember this because mine broke once.

    There also was another nice feature. You could record audio on one track, and the tape data on the other. With a couple of peeks and pokes you could then listen to something while your data loaded from tape. Nice feature because the transfer rate was a brisk 300 baud.

    The Atari also was one of the only machines that allowed you to hear the data transfer. Some part of the process went through the audio chip, and would pipe to the speaker by default. Cracked the copy protection on Ultima II because of this. They used the bad sector trick. Well on the Atari machine breaking this was easy. You put in the original disk, then listen for the bad sector. Remember the number of beeps. Do the same thing again with the copy (I wanted a backup that I could mod ok?), and just open the drive door when the right time came. Wait a second, then close it. Game loads fine. Guess they were not looking for a specific error, just any error.

  • IRIX machines. They just don't die. Have a couple of them from the late 80's to early 90's. They still are useful for many things. Heck I have one that runs at 30mhz, and it makes a fine mp3 player. Even while running NFS!

    Anyway, old machines 10 years from now will be those designed like the Atari machine was. Reliable, simple, and flexible. The cheap clones, and comprimise machines will be in the dumpster.

  • Posting WAY too much to this discussion, but dammit I liked my Atari.

    The 600xl was basically an 800xl with less ram. (16k i think.) You could upgrade it, but very few people did. The Xl series of machines featured cheaper hardware, greater addressable RAM, and slightly improved graphics chips. You could put the ROM, and the chips in the older (400 800) machines, and get everything but the bank switched RAM.

    The xl machines also had fewer joystick ports. 2 instead of 4.

  • Geez.. I hope we didn't kill a kid by slashdotting their heart monitor / web server. Hardware IS tight over there you know. The entire country probably has to timeshare that Atari 800XL.

  • What happens when it breaks? (Score:3)

    by sbaker ( 47485 ) on Sunday December 17, 2000 @06:21AM (#553803) Homepage
    In a sense, there is no problem with this - it did the job well when it was a brand shiney new computer - and it's still (presumably) doing the job well right now.

    The concern I have is what they do as these machines start to fail? Do they have a fallback plan? It seems that someone should be porting this key chunk of software to (say) a 386 :-) or at least getting *real* familiar with Atari emulators!

    So often, people wait until it's too late to do that port.

    I once worked in a company that used a BASIC program on 8088-based PC's to do a key realtime control operation in one of their products. When 8088's became unobtainable, they simply moved the code onto a 286 and discovered to their horror that it didn't work. Because this software had been written many years ago - and had never needed to be updated, they didn't even have a software engineer in that part of the organization (I worked in another division). They struggled on for a while buying up old 8088's second-hand and refurbishing them - but in the end, they called me in to rewrite the code.

    It turned out that the code had done all it's timing using empty 'FOR' loops (Ick!) - which of course ran faster on the 286's. That was a hard problem to fix because by the time they had me on board, they'd sold the very last 8088 they could lay their hands on and I had no way to figure out the lengths of those delays loops. In the end, I had to chuck out the entire program and develop a new one from scratch in C (using hardware timers
    and not empty 'for' loops of course).

  • What never ceases to amaze me is that new, supposedly better OS like Linux turn out to be really sloppy, crawling crap, because someone along the line trashed the old remains fast and efficient on deprecated hardware - no need to have the latest Pentium slogan that initially pushed Linux to the forefront.

    Today's Linux is slow, buggy and no longer runs efficiently on a 486 with 16 MB of RAM.

    By contrast, my Atari TT030 runs MiNT [freemint.de]. Even though recent improvements of its programming library has made MiNT somewhat fatter than it was a year ago, it is still the most efficient hardware/software combination in my UNIX collection.

    As for my Linux boxes, someone recently suggested that FreeBSD or OpenBSD would be more secure and more robust choices to upgrade to. I guess so, although I cannot help but wonder how long those OS will remain lean and mean, let along usable.


    --
  • We should send one over, they could probably run their whole ICU on it.
  • But 10 years ago you never needed to change your BIOS, something which is commonplace nowadays. I only swapped the BIOS once during those days, and that was to install a special version with no POST to minimalise boot times - counting 16MB of memory took a long time!

    The OP was pointing out that quality control has slipped dramatically over the years. Today's hardware has become overtly complicated, leading to numerous teething problems, just to squeeze an extra 5% performance from the hardware. Most of this complexity would not be required if we didn't have the need to run excessivly complex software instigated by the latest programming techniques. OOP with late linking and bytecode interpreters have a lot to answer for.

  • It is not that we need a faster computer to do the same things; we need a faster computer for the latest killer app. We needed to upgrade so that we could do desktop publishing, gaming, graphs, spell checking, the Internet, music sharing, or movie editing.

    Good point. We've gotten into trouble by trying to have one machine for everything. That is, most people just want word processing and web browsing. The bulk of computers has come from needing to support high end applications, such as 3D modelling and magazine layout. Arguably it would have been better to have simple machines for most uses, then high-end specialized machines for those businesses that need it. This would be better than transferring unneeded R&D costs to the consumer every time something new comes along: MMX, Pentium III & 4, AGP, USB, SSE2, 3D-Now!, AMD 64-bit architecture, etc.
  • We all get more than a little over enthusiastic for "modern" technology, and think it can solve all the worlds problems.

    However, "modern" equipment malfunctions with unpredictability, and it gets outdated even more quickly, than its predecessors. We all like to exagerrate how inexpensive Intel PCs are nowadays, and how widely available they are. Forgetting that more than half of the World's population have never used a telephone before, let alone connect up to the Internet.

    Forgetting of course that when the first PC came out they were 2000 (UK pound sterling) and today the standard PC you get from shops are still at least 1000 (UK pound sterling). Showing virtually no change in price. Where as the equivalent 8-bit machines have dropped from 200(?) pounds in price to 50?

    Forgetting of course, because PCs are so expensive, cheap (and technically inferior) game consoles systems like Sony and Dreamcast can undercut PC games, and claim a Lion's share of the market easily.

    Lets not forget that the PC CPU architecture pre-dates even the 8-bit machines, and is from the 1970s, hardly "modern". All the parts are a mish mash from different manufacturers, that the whole is less than sum of the parts.

    The 8-bit computers layed the foundation on which the modern PC market is built on. You cannot cast aspertions on their character without casting them on the modern market which lives off the inheritance.

    "A disciple is not greater than his teacher, but at his best will be like his teacher".

    Modern PCs will be AT BEST as fun, as simple, as cheap, as plural, and widely availabe as their 8-bit benefactors. The fact that they fall short of this is part of the problem here.
  • [sorry to nerds and real slashdotters - this comment is targeted to morons and script-kiddies-like contributors] Damm it! What a juicy discussion. From the comments posted a get feeling that you must see us as kind of prehistoric apes. Whatever! We realy like watching Simpsons and enjoy comparing it to your silly-consume-burger-cola-like lifestyle. Let me explain some points. The example of atari shown was meant as a contribute to years diying 8-bit community (by some mirracle still surviving). It is not reflecting the technology state of our country. But healthcare is really underscored, as someone stated, the same wayas in other countries. Maybe a bit more here. Anyway, I wonder then, why big silicon valley IT companies are pouring such money in investments here... I could post photos of our old CRAY EL system, contributed to our small museum on faculty. It is dedicated to be dusted and rusted and I am sure it could perform same task in better way. But running such system nowadays is a bit expensive, much more then Atari 800. As for using such system in our school, thanks, we prefer Origin2000 with latest IRIX instead of UNICOS. The page whitch was slashdotted was situated on some kind of hobby server, sorry. I am sure it would run better on some IBM global network or else backbone. But fuxoft is known as 8-bit fan from before revolution and I won't be suprised, if the server realy was some old piece of chunk. Please don't even think of donations. We got enought of mess here, but thanx. As for me, I prefer ZX and FreeBSD...
  • Ah, the good old Atari 800XL. My elementary school was full of 'em. We had all sorts of education games, like "Word Balloons" and some of the lucky classrooms had *printers* and the Print Shop. They were a tiny machine too, probably smaller than the Microsoft Natural Keyboard. The used a giant disk drive though. It was horrendously loud. Reading disks sounded like it was grinding gears on a truck. They all sounded that way. We also used a program called "translator" to run certain software. I never figured out what that one did.

    They were useful machines, plenty for educational games. And they didn't crash. Neither did our PS/2's when we got them. We had to wait for Windows before we could experience crashing.
  • Actually, the 800XL could be boosted to at least 512K [atarimagazines.com] of ram.

    I remember seeing an ad for a 4 meg upgrade a couple of years ago, but I can't find any trace of it on the web.
    --
  • The DOD Sticker on the Atari probably means nothing anymore. Over here in N-VA, the Pentagon regularly dumps old hardware. I have some hard disks sitting here with "This medium is unclassified, US Govt. Property" on them.
  • Would you also hate to fly in aeroplanes that use z80's an the likes in their avionics equipment?
    I guess you should travel by train instead!
  • I'd hate to be on the receiving end of a healthcare system with such antiquated stuff
    What scares me is when computers actually perform the tests. That doesn't seem to be the case with the Czech hospital, but it was the case with some nerve conduction studies that I had done about seven yeas ago. The doctor put electrodes on my wrist and arm, and the entire test was run and controlled using a regular old PC. Of course, there was some hardware between the PC and my arm in order to generate electrical pulses along my nerves and record the results. I don't recall whether the PC was running Windows or not (I hope not), but I wasn't too comforted by the fact that some computer was deciding how much of a shock to give me. Presumably though, programmers of medical devices are much more rigorous than programmers of business applications.
  • The interm solution really isn't that hard -- contact a few hundred schoolboards, offer to take all their old Atari equipment off their hands.

    Make backups of the tapes (just use a regular duplicator on slow speed), and you've got enough equipment to last until the software *needs* updating.

    Problem solved.

    --
  • Wow! That must be damned fast! No waiting for Windows to open...

  • The original poster wasn't talking about buying a p4. He mentioned a p90. I know a place here in town where, depending on inventory, I could probably get a server-grade p90 (dual hot swap PS, SCSI , 32Mb ram (heh), typical corp. file server from 5 years ago) for USD$300 or so. A basic p90 machine I could probably find for $100. PCs _are_ very cheap, if you buy a few years back on the tech curve.

    Where did you pull the 1970's-pc-cpu-arch rant from? yes, the i4004 and i8008 chips were from the mid 70s, but here's a news-flash dude: the i586 bears as much resemblance to them as my left asscheck bears to the Queen Mum (<-- same pasty white color but thats about it). "a mish mash from different manufacturers" -- so? as long as it works, so what? If anything, this is a good thing becuase parts are easier to find. I'm sure the Atari's cpu and an pentium can both do the required amount of data processing, so there is no difference on a user-spec level between them.

    I don't think there is anything technically wrong with old proprietary hardware, but that's not the point. The point is: can it push the bits so the docs can use it (it can), and is it easily maintainable (Atari loses big here). How many repair shops are there for early 80s Ataris compared to x86 shops?

    Regardless of how you may feel about machine Foo versus machine Bar, it doesn't matter to the end users. They just want something that works reliably. This can be hard for techies to get becuase we care so much about the technical aspects, but most secretaries could give two shits if Word was coded in C or C++ or Befunge as long as it works (in as much as Word works).


    --

  • Are they buying them? I have one laying around I could get rid of... :)
  • I love how the elitist nerd types think you need a P3 1GHz machine for a data logger. A machine 1/10th the speed of that atari would probably do just fine. I immagine the program is so short that a cassette loads it up in a few minutes. Less time that it takes some linux or windozes machines to shut down and reboot.
  • The great thing about an Atari is that they have no moving parts, and are low power. The tape can be any stereo tape player as far as I remember, as long as you have the proper serial cable.

    I was going to use an old 486/133 w 16m ram for an firewall, but I don't know if having that power supply fan running 24/7 would be a good idea. Rebooting on a floppy is problematic as well. (I guess there is a good use for one of those i-openers after all!) The only good reason to get one of those linksys firewalls IMHO is that they are low power don't need a floppy to reboot.

    Is there any cheap alternative for a linux router? A small low power EPROM-able device that could run a Linux router at low power? Something without a fan and a hard drive?

  • I feel compelled to correct our Commie fan. The 800XL did NOT max out at 48K, it came STANDARD with a full 64K or RAM. Remember, the 6502/6510 CPU could only address 64K at once and both the 800XL and C64 used the same family of processors. This means that additional ROM had to be mapped in place of part of the RAM when the machines booted up in BASIC.

    In the 800XL 48K of memory was free for programs when all the ROM was switched in place (I'll concede that if DOS was loaded in with it that figure shrank slightly). On the C64, LESS THAN 40K was free. To top it all off, all the 8-bit Ataris ran at an 80% HIGHER clock speed than the C64, and the 800XL had 256 colours vs. the C64 (the Atari could produce some stunning greyscale images). The Atari disc drives were something like 10 times faster. In fact, the C64 drive was considerably SLOWER than the CASSETTE TAPE drive on another interesting 8-bit computer, the Coleco ADAM (I personally tested this fact and found it to be true). I/O in general was better in every way on the Atari XL series (faster, easier to program, more expandible) than on the C64.

    Atari BASIC actually had sound and graphics commands (the C64, desipte it's sound and graphics power had a sucky Commodore PET-derived BASIC). Atari disc drive users also had a REAL DOS. On the C64 you had to use arcane, kludgy commands to even get a simple directory listing.

    And last but not least, C64s and the earlier 1541 disc drives were less reliable than anything Atari ever put out. The acid test is how they fared in schools. The C64's (unlike the rock-solid PETs of an earlier era) were always suffering from joystick connector problems, power supply glitches, keyboard defects and do on. Ataris seemed to fare better under similar use (even though the keyboards had a mushy feel that would frustrate touch typists).

    In conclusion, Commies suck and Atari Rulez d00dz!

  • Many people have said (correctly in my opinion) that there's nothing wrong with using, say, 10-year-old computer technology now, because it's very reliable, not to mention cheap, as long as it can handle whatever you're throwing at it.

    So 10 years from now, what will people be using as "old reliable cheap" hardware? Will Pentium-III, Pentium-4, or AMD PC's assume that role? Will they somehow become more reliable if they survive for another 10 years? :-)

    (My own personal answer is, yes, a P-III or AMD running Linux *is* generally very stable. But I sure hope Windows98 doesn't seem comparatively "reliable" 10 years from now, when judged against the standards at the time.)

  • Java? (Score:1)

    by Defiler ( 1693 )
    Does it run the Java VM as well?
    Not only will it save your life, it will waste cycles on glitzy applets!

  • So what does this indicate? (Score:3)

    by taliver ( 174409 ) on Sunday December 17, 2000 @05:27AM (#553824)
    1) Maybe a 1.5GHz processor is not really necessary for any reasonable application.
    2) Instead of better processors, we simply need better algorithms.
    3) Instead of insisting that schools have the absolute latest computers, maybe we should make children try to do more with the systems they have.
    4) Maybe I should just shut up.

  • =) (Score:1)

    by ArKayDE ( 264625 )
    At least it's a realtime OS, don't you think? =)

  • Oops! (Score:3)

    by laursen ( 36210 ) <laursen@netgrLISPoup.dk minus language> on Sunday December 17, 2000 @05:22AM (#553826) Homepage
    Now we broke their last piece of technology by slashdotting their server!
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I'd hate to be on the receiving end of a healthcare system with such antiquated stuff. Would this mean they're also sharing medical tools from the Smithsonian? Its surely a sad thing to see the tech industry boom with some little being down in other sectors such as healthcare. Maybe some generous corporation can help out a country by donating at least a Pentium II or something similar.

    Not too sure what this has to do with technology though, someone must've been a bit hit up for stories. I know of a company using a tweaked up Commodore for a gateway/cache machine does this mean I should post it as relevant?

    My Slashdot Spoof [antioffline.com]
  • ... but why don't you find someone to mirror these sites *before* they get slashdotted?
    Surely someone could do it?

  • If it works... (Score:3)

    by Gordonjcp ( 186804 ) on Sunday December 17, 2000 @05:26AM (#553830) Homepage
    ...don't fix it.
    Seriously, when was the last time you ever heard of unrepeatable bizarre crashes on the old 8-bit machines like this?
    I would be a lot happier with mission-critical stuff run on a ZX Spectrum than on any new PC.
  • Judging by the speed at which the page loaded, they're using another one for the webserver. Probably got a pair of z80 based routers too.
    --Shoeboy
  • That URL you posted doesn't work, can you repost please?
  • Heh, this brings me back to the ole Commodore vs Atari or Spectrum wars in the '80s (in magazine letter pages etc.).

    Some things never end, it seems! ;-)

  • The thought of using an Atari 800 in a hospital may sound weird, but if you take it in context, this is extremely logical.

    For a very long time, nobody east of the "iron curtain" was allowed to buy 16-bit hardware. Which guarantees the development of a pool of expertise in 8-bit platforms. It would be interesting to know how many Apple II, Comodore 64, 8088-PC experts there are in eastern Europe.

    And remember that the Atari was specifically designed for data acquisition. Of course, that normally means joysticks and such, but I seem to recall a certain popularity as a lab machine when it first came out.

    And of course, there's the economic factor. I doubt if many Czech hospitals have the hard cash it would take to buy the off-the-shelf equivalent from Agilent.

    Hey, now I know what to do with all that old hardware I couldn't bear to throw out!!!!

    __________________

  • Exactly! When you have a REAL mission-critical task, it's far better to strive for semplicity and resistance than for features and speed.
    Just to have another example... do you think that Voyagers and Pioneers would have survived more than 20 years if they were launched with something as complex as a PIII/WhateverModernOS system?

  • It's not weird (Score:5)

    by rde ( 17364 ) on Sunday December 17, 2000 @05:27AM (#553836)
    At the risk of sounding like an anti-consumer-society rantist, what's weird is that all these computers are being thrown out when they're still useful. How many people out there are using a PIII for surfing and a bit of word processing? How many 486s are thrown out each year because they're obsolete?

    The 800XL is a powerful computer. Not by today's standards, perhaps, but basic data-processing needs haven't advanced so much in the last fifteen years that the an atari, a ti99-4a or even the noble spectrum can't handle them. I'd have my doubts about a vic 20, but I've had those doubts for decades now.

    Personally, I'm delighted that these things are still being used, rather than stuck on a landfill leeching lead and PCBs into the ground.
  • I didn't get to read the page, because it was MIA, but my thought is that for such a specialized application that does not change over time, the old hardware is good.

    Replacing the hardware with something better would be cheap and easy. The difficulty would come in porting the software. As long as the software you need runs acceptably well on the hardware you've got, the (rational) motivation to upgrade is low.

    That said, fast new hardware is a wonderful thing. For developing, high level languages and reduced compile times make a big difference. For many scientific applications, it just isn't practical to run on slower hardware.

    I guess the lesson is, for every task, the best tool is the one that does the job.

  • at least they dont need to run windoze.
  • And even 10 years ago, people were making fun of me for having Atari 8-bits!

    (I even still write software for them sometimes:
    http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/atari/ [www.])

  • It was actually slashdotted before the 5th ...
  • I can't believe I'm saying this, but... post it on Ebay.

    Or post a For Sale message to comp.sys.atari.8bit.

    Or have a garage sale.

    Or give one away to a charitable organization.

    Or get an SIO2PC cable (to use your PC as a disk drive) and hook it back up and play games! :)
    It's amazing how many 8K-32K files you can download with DSL. :)
  • I used to have 800XL with a floppy drive, so the storage technology does not have to be so screwed up...
  • Here, in Poland, many hospitals are stil using VAX boxes for heart and lung radioisotophe diagostics.
  • Jay Miner... may he rest in peace.
    (He died a few years ago; never did keep up with what ever happened with Atari 8-bits... I wonder
    how he would have felt seeing some of the AWESOME stuff that came out of the European demo scene!?)

    Speaking of Amiga, I was playing emulated Sinistar on my PSX last night, and was reminded that the guy who wrote it ALSO worked on the Amiga (and the Atari Lynx). It's a small (kick-ass) world. :)
  • Dear Gordonjcp,

    You have not yet read the FAQ [slashdot.org]. Please do so before asking again.

    Thank you.
  • Sorry, didn't mean to imply that you guys were still hitting each over the head with wooden clubs. My company sells a lot of RAD software in eastern Europe. But you have to admit that there are a lot of Oderestians with expertise in "obsolete" platforms with limited memory and low-powered processors. In this era of bloatware, such expertise is not to be sneered at.

    __________________

  • But on the C64, you could flip the ROM out and use the RAM underneath. The main ROM banks were BASIC ROM and KERNEL [sic] ROM. Most games flipped BASIC ROM out, since they didn't need it anyway. And if you wanted to, you could flip the Kernal out and replace with your own. Not an option on the Atari.

    That was true for the Atari 800 but not the 800XL. The 800XL had 64K and it's ROM & BASIC could be flipped out too. The 130XE had 128K which would bank switch in the extra 64K as needed.

    You're talking BASIC. And that's not quire right. As Commodore tokenized it basic keywords, you could write more BASIC code on a C64 than on an Atari.

    Um, the Atari's BASIC was tokenized too. You did have the option of saving the BASIC program as a "text" file (LIST "D:FILENAME") or in it's tokenized format (SAVE "D:FILENAME"). Note how much easier it was to save ("D:" means disk drive, if you want to save to cassette use "C:" instead), no arcane commands to remember.

    I'll give you the one on the tape drive. Atari had a lousy tape drive, it was faster but unreliable.

    Speaking of keyboards the early PET had a chiclet keyboard, so even Commodore put out terrible keyboards.
  • My internal clock counts in centuries and uses (binary) fixed point arithmetic with only two decimal places. Crap isn't it? I'm waiting to get upgraded to 16 bits.
    --
  • So I just saw the pictures... Couldn't they make a fair amount of money by just auctioning off that calculator they have in the drawer on eBay? It's certainly an antique.

  • Some folks have asked 'Why Atari' and 'how did they get that computer'?

    I went to Frankfurt American High School [fahs.org] from 1982-1986, a US DoDDS (Department of Defense Dependent Schools [odedodea.edu]) school.

    Instead of Apple IIs (that everyone else seemed to have at school at the time in the US) we had Atari 400, 800, 800XL computers. Lots and lots of them.

    Apparently when they were eventually thrown away or sold, this hospital in the Czech Republic got one knew how to make it do tricks. I'm happy to see it put to good use!

  • Not exactly critical but cost-effective--My family doctor in Juneau, AK has a spirometer feeding the serial port of a 2x 5-1/4 in floppy driven pc with a printer on the parallel port.(no harddrive) He gets US$85 every time you blow into the thing.
  • Nearly 25 years after its release and with less memory and a slower CPU than any Atari a Sinclair ZX81 still makes just as good a doorstop as it ever did.
    --
  • It doesnt take much of a machine to teach someone programming. Most schools are trying to teach common office applications, so you need something quite a bit more modern than a TRS-80 which worked fine for teaching basic coding skills. When you get into microsoft bloatware applications, like powerpoint or office 2000, THEN you need the P3-733 machine with 128 meg and the 75 gig hard drive.
  • You could also actually get hard drives [atarimagazines.com] for the 8 bit atari systems, so there are many options beyond casettes.
    --
  • The 800XLs had slightly different firmware from the original 400/800. The Translator trapped out the 800XLs firmware and loaded the original 400/800 firmware into 16K of ram that was mapped in the same locations the OS roms. And yes, this had to be done with bankswitching. It was bad on one hand because 16K was generally unavailable to BASIC (short of using some really dodgy assembly language tricks). It was good because the OS of the machine could be swapped out for other things entirely.
  • If you open up just about any piece of life saving (ie., ECG) or other crital box of electronics (rail road switch) you will find 8 bit microcontroller at the heart of it. Whis is a world of 8KB of RAM and a few MHz of clock speed. Using an 8 bit micro for more than one real-time task is a challange, but with some very carefull ASM code it can be done.

    One thing that make my skin crawl is the thought of connecting up patients to an off the shelf computer without any electrical isolation. Just place electrodes on your chest so that you have a direct electrical path into your heart from the computer. Hook those electrodes to a power supply built by the lowest bidder to minimal standards. Now ask yourself, "are you feeling lucky, punk?" An off the self computer can be used just fine, but propper engineering MUST be done to provide proper isolation at the pre-amps before the signal reaches the computer.

    For that matter the largest selling computing platform on earth is a 2 MHz Z80-like 8 bit micro ---- Game Boy!

    On-On,

    Scott
  • The Translator was a program that made the 800XL emulate the older 800. Some programs written for the 800 wouldn't run on the 800XL, so Atari provided the Translator as a fix.

    It was a clever piece of software, it would copy an image of the old 800's ROM to the 800XL's RAM then turn off the 800XL's ROM. This was possible because the 800XL had an extra 16K of RAM that could be switched in and out with it's ROM.
  • I never had a screw fall out of an Atari 800. They were built like tanks. Atari was very concerned about the FCC approvals and had placed all of the electronics inside of cast metal boxes.

    The 800's chipset was designed by the same person who designed the Amiga's chipset... which Commodore later bought.
  • Good luck putting 500 gigs in a vic-20: It looks to me like the Vic 20 only had 3 address lines [slottet.adsl.dk] available for bank switching. I'd love to know how you plan to work around that.

    Also, there were commercially available products to give over a meg of memory to an 800XL which just plugged into the expansion bus. Take a look here [atarimagazines.com] for an example of how far an 800XL could be pushed with commercially available upgrades in 1987. Sure blows the additional 512k that your C128+1750 had out of the water...
    --
  • Ahahahha! I've haven't made this argument in many a year. While I have to agree that Atari's hardware put C= to shame, you couldn't beat C='s marketing (until they got the Amiga). Not that it matters though..... KikStart's basic consumer electronics rule: The second-best product always wins. Examples: PC's Vs. Amiga/Macs, Beta Vs. VHS, Gameboy Vs. Lynx, Windows vs. Linux.. Er.. Ok, the jury's still out on that one. :0

  • in case of /.-ing (Score:5)

    by myster0n ( 216276 ) on Sunday December 17, 2000 @05:46AM (#553861)
    The links go to the original JPEGS on their site - be gentle

    Atari in hospital

    I was contacted some time ago by some person asking me if I can help with repair or replacement of Atari 800XL for hospital. I was very curious about that, because it's known that Czech hospitals are in bad financial situation but I just wondered how they could use it at the end of the nineties. The person was kind enough to send me some details about setup and also sent me few pictures.

    Description
    It's used in child cardiocenter in Faculty Hospital Motol for the heart diagnosis. They are looking for uninvited leaks between two parts of heart. Principle is in injecting isotope in blood and screening its movement in vascular system of pacient.

    Usage
    1) Computer is started, program is loaded from cassette.
    2) Entering the data of patient (name, birthdate, height, weight).
    3) Entering the date & time of checkup.
    4) Entering the age of the isotope.
    5) Program computes the optimal amount of isotope.
    6) The probes are pointed to certain places of patient's body.
    7) Injection of isotope.
    8) For 5 minutes the program records the data from the probes.
    9) Saving the data to cassette.
    10) Disconnecting the gamma interface, connecting the teletype interface.
    11) Priting of the protocol to teletype.

    The checkup could be done by usage of other gamma camera, but it takes about 1 hour and the amount of isotope needs to be higher.

    Setup
    4 gamma probes
    plotter
    Atari 800 XL
    Atari XC 12 datasette with Turbo2000
    teletype T100
    interface Atari gamma probes (two joystick connectors)
    interface Atari teletype (one joystick connector)
    monitor

    Pictures
    (70 KB JPG) [slashdot.org]
    Detail of setup. Black box at the left behind is power supply for interface.

    (74 KB JPG) [slashdot.org]
    Overall look to gamma probes and plotter.

    (67 KB JPG) [slashdot.org]
    Detail of setup.

    (66 KB JPG) [slashdot.org]
    Overall look. At the left is teletype machine.

    (65 KB JPG) [slashdot.org]
    Overall look.

    (62 KB JPG) [slashdot.org]
    Detail of sticker on the computer. I wonder where did they got it.


    Atari pages accessed xxx times.Last modified: Wed Dec 6 13:33:40 2000
    (c) 2000 Jindroush [mailto]

  • Why Atari? (Score:5)

    by Mike Schiraldi ( 18296 ) on Sunday December 17, 2000 @05:46AM (#553862) Homepage Journal
    I think an NES would be better - just think of games like Zelda, with built-in heart monitors. When you supply of hearts gets low, it starts beeping. Viola.

    --

  • Isn't that one of the great things about Linux? Many people are running firewalls from an old 486 with mimimal RAM. Sure is much cheaper and "enviromentally friendly" (*groan* hate that phrase) than buying a new NT machine that you can bring to it's knees with check point.


    Why do you hate that phrase? The irony of running a second computer (or a computer at all!) for "environmentally friendly" reasons?

  • hold on a sec (Score:3)

    by slashdoter ( 151641 ) on Sunday December 17, 2000 @05:47AM (#553864) Homepage
    one second sir, we'll get to your heart attack in a moment but first we need to blow out the cartrage and the port it plugs in to....*beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee*


    ________

  • Now when the US implements national health care, they can use this as a blue print and make it affordable for us without raising taxes:)

  • Healthcare is always overstretched (Score:3)

    by gattaca ( 27954 ) on Sunday December 17, 2000 @05:55AM (#553868)
    Name me one country in the world where there is as much money to spend on healthcare as people would like.

    If an Atari does the job then use an Atari. They're cheap. I wonder how many more patients in the UK or US could be treated if people didn't upgrade their computers/stethescopes/coffee machines etc. because they want something new and shiny, rather than because there's a good reason for it.

    Plus, it's probably pretty well debugged by now...

  • I'd hate to be on the receiving end of a healthcare system with such antiquated stuff.

    As long as it works, why? Would you prefer a hospital that uses a multi-million dollar piece of equipment to take your temperature in only twice the time it takes to use a regular thermometer?

    The thing is, most of the people who would object to that also want lower healthcare costs. Is it really necessary for non-critical hospital equipment to be built to milspec or better? The equipment in question is a useful diagnostic tool, but nobody dies if it is down for a day.

  • On the "Atari in Hospital" page there is a sticker that is on the Atari that says "US Government Property". The author of the webpage asks what the sticker may mean, here is what it does:

    The sticker is a little identification mark that is put on all Department of Defense Dependents School (DODDS) properties including computers.

    DODDSs school are located all over the world, including Germany which isn't quite that far from the Czech Republic. Knowing quite a bit about these schools, I know that they just recently (about 2 or 3 years) ago moved to this ID type, so if this computer has this sticker, then the Atari really is from an American school somewhere in Europe.

    I really don't know how Czech people would receive this Atari (especially since the sticker would be removed if the computer would be donated or sold through government auction/sale)

    If you have any more questions, be sure to ask.
  • The "game" ports were actually as follows:

    One latched "trigger" input for the FIRE button. On each leading edge of this input only signal, the x/y position of the electron beam was stored in a pair of registers for light pen implementation.

    Four I/O bits from the 6532 PIO chip. These were user settable as either input or output lines via a mask register on the 6532.

    Two ADC converters. There was no DAC facility. The buggers worked by discharging a capacitor at the end of vertical blank and charging it back up through the input line. When the voltage reached a predetermined level, the Y value of the electron beam was copied into a register.

    It don't believe that it would be very difficult to implement this sort of primitive I/O on a more modern system. The ADC function would require a bit of hardware, but not much.
  • >Is there any cheap alternative for a linux router? A small low power EPROM-able device that could run a Linux router at low power? Something without a fan and a hard drive?

    http://www.us.buy.com/retail/searchresults.asp?q u= cable+router

    OK, so it's not Linux, but these things are cheap and have no moving parts.

  • Old Computers Never Die (Score:3)

    by cluge ( 114877 ) on Sunday December 17, 2000 @05:58AM (#553888) Homepage
    One thing that amazes me is that people want to junk perfectly good machines because it doesn't run the latest *whiz bang shoot em up* If it does what you want it to quickly, why must you junk it?

    Computer manufacturers are pushing the limits of technology, and the shortened life span of a computer and the development cycle is necessary to keep the tremendous growth that these companies now expect. (nee and so does wall street) This is great for us gadget people that always like the latest and greatest. It's not so good for companies that are forced to retire a substantial investment in hardware because it won't run the lastest MS WORD 2K sp1rev5.

    The affect these diminished "time to market" approaches has on quality of hardware and software is also readily apparent. (10 years ago how often did you need to flash the BIOS?)

    Isn't that one of the great things about Linux? Many people are running firewalls from an old 486 with mimimal RAM. Sure is much cheaper and "enviromentally friendly" (*groan* hate that phrase) than buying a new NT machine that you can bring to it's knees with check point.

    In the end if the equipment works for you, and if it's reliable then use it. The old atari's never crash, is it any wonder that it's in a mission critical application? Necessity is the mother of invention. Because that invention is old does not make the solution any less valid.

  • was in "Xanadu: the house of the future", an attraction in the Wisconsin Dells. I believe it is closed now, but even in the early '90s an Atari 800 was still controlling all the lights and appliances in the house. How futuristic!
  • Having grown up with the Atari 8-bit computers, I was one of the first to try any Atari emulator that came out, and see what programs have been written for it recently. In the 1990's, you'll still find many demo groups in Poland and the Czech Republic coding for the Atari 8-bit. It stands to reason that in such countries, where budgets tend to be tighter than in the far West, people would find all sorts of ways to keep old equipment alive. A few years ago I was watching Russian local news on C-Span, and there was a time display at the top of the screen; the font was unmistakably that of an Atari 8-bit.

    While it is a shame that these machines are gathering dust in thrift stores in America, the truth is that almost nobody would know how to put one to really good use. As word processors, they're adequate as long as an 80-column dot-matrix printouts are adequate. As spreadsheet calculators, they're archaic and less intuitive than programs like Microsoft Excel. And, generally, in the workplace, if you find someone who can use a computer without a mouse, that person is worth enough money that you can as easily buy an Intel or Apple machine as hire them. The appropriate software for a given job might exist somewhere, but unless you've grown up reading Antic magazine and know all the websites and own an APE cable, good luck finding it. Though, at games, they rock as much as ever; cartridges don't bit-rot like disks do.

    The Commodore 64 has done slightly better for itself, as at least it has GEOS, which supports mouse input and WYSIWYG sorts of applications. In that regard, though, even an original 1984 Macintosh is superior. In fact, an old Mac is perfect for a lot of modest tasks, because it has the GUI interface and WYSIWYG support that represents what people expect from computers. And the necessary software often does exist, even if it is outdated and hard to find nowadays. It will suffice, as long as one does not raise the question of the Internet.

    The obsolescence of 8-bit computers is not a technological one; it is a cultural one. It is not that we need a faster computer to do the same things; we need a faster computer for the latest killer app. We needed to upgrade so that we could do desktop publishing, gaming, graphs, spell checking, the Internet, music sharing, or movie editing.

    The exception, of course, is when you upgrade because the latest version of your favorite Microsoft program is slower than the last one, for some reason.

  • For an even more obscure fact, the space shuttle, which hasn't been remodeled in over 20 years, still runs on 4-bit Intel processors. (I would like to say it is the 4044.)

    No, it doesn't.

    The flight critical software is run on a redundant set of IBM AP-101 computers. The AP-101 is a 32-bit machine that is a descendant of the IBM 360. See this page [nasa.gov].

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