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The Burroughs J3 computer used on the WS107A weapons
system, the Atlas ICBM, was a 24 bit, sign+23 bit fixed-magnitude machine,
running at 420kHz, with 400 24 bit words of core memory. With such meager
resources, I was able to receive radar R,A,E digital data at a 10 pps rate and
convert it to metrics every half second, calculate the 3d position of an
aircraft, and steer it to the start point of one-of-seven switch-selectable test
courses, keep it in a circular orbit until the start of the run, give a 10
second warning until the start of the run, then guide it along the desired
track. This also required a sine computing routine, and a
square-root routine. All of this was done in machine language. Consider now
the micro-processor with its canned routines that are user selectable, and
if the programmer doesn't know these routines inside out, they can
give him some real heartburn in real-time applications. How many real-time
programmers are out there who will write the total software and all of the
necessary routines to operate an ignition or fuel injection system so that he
knows the software intimately.
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