At 6:04 PM -0400 5/13/99, Bill Ezell wrote:
>... the main processor in the scope is a Motorola 68000;
>an old and venerable processor. Should Meade be criticized for using such a
>slow, old, CPU?
>
>For those of you in the East, whenever you buy something at CircuitCity,
>*every* point-of-sale terminal in the store is run by their proprietary
>in-store system, which they call a CC-130. Each CC-130 runs at least 16 POS
>terminals, handles a satellite link back to the home office, runs the
>ticket printers, and does a bunch of other stuff.
>
>This machine's CPU is, you gessed it, a Motorola 680x0!
>(Specifically, a 16Mhz 68020)

There's a huge difference between a 68000 and a 68020.

But I agree with your main point. The 68000 is adequate for its
task. There doesn't seem to be any lack of CPU power in the LX200.
Its computer problems are more on the software side. That is
*partly* due to a lack of memory, both RAM and ROM; IIRC the new ROMs
are 1 megabyte and there's only a trivial amount of RAM. Most of the
ROM is taken up by the database not leaving much for code. But I'll
bet there are a dozen or more folks reading this message that could
significantly improve the LX200 code with minimal effort and with the
existing hardware if they were given access to the source.

Bill Arnett
http://www.seds.org/billa/
"I know that I am mortal and the creature of a day; but when I search
out the massed wheeling circles of the stars, my feet no longer touch
the earth, but, side by side with Zeus himself, I take my fill of
ambrosia, the food of the gods." -- Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy)

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