This week I found out that what we thought (or at least what I thought we thought...no one tells me anything) were two computers turned out to be one cable passthrough and one computer. I am speaking, of course, of the...thing...that came with the particle accelerator. The initial plan was to write a program that would replace one of the computers and probe the other one that only "conditions" the signals into readable voltages/forms. HA!
Ok, let me explain further. The particle accelerator/klystron/power cabinet/master oscillator, all of them, output signals to the computer. This computer is made to condition those signals into something that will not overload the delicate circuitry (-10V to +10V is on the outer edge of being acceptable). This is a custom designed/built computer of old (1995). It is so old that its ram is partially connected to the rest of the system through IDE cables...yeah. Without going to in-depth, to hook my program/computer up to this system would be the equivalent of taking two computers running say Windows 3x and Ubuntu, wiring the Ubuntu machine into the Windows machine (probing for signals, and sending signals into places they would overwrite the Windows' machine's signals). Then, run completely different, custom designed software on both machines to do relatively the same thing, just the Ubuntu machine has newer software. Watch everything go to hell.
This is my job. I have no idea how to do it. I have really no idea where to start anymore. BLEAH! Tomorrow I am going to see if I can trace cables and see if it is at all possible to scrap the whole machine and just emulate it. Luckily (I want to kiss the man/woman who did this) for some reason all the memory addresses/bus transfer (I don't know which) for the data/signals are given to me in hex; thank the Lord. So vaguely theoretically, I can pretend my program is the old computer and just accept and decode the signals; but its a stretch.
Please pray.
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