Posted by Bill Vermillion on 01/11/01 11:36

In article <09rjr1t87nfbjno3m638cknto55trpav1f@4ax.com>,
Roy L. Fuchs <roylfuchs@urfargingicehole.org> wrote:
>On Tue, 03 Jan 2006 00:05:00 GMT, bv@wjv.com (Bill Vermillion) Gave
>us:

[huge hunks deleted - wjv]

>>And I first started working the laser disks when I was part of team
>>writing what turned out to be the worlds first electronics parts
>>catalog using Sony 1000 players [with a format incompatible with
>>the Pioneer until the A model from Sony], and IBM PCs using
>>DOS 2.0.

> Oh boy. A database. Good job, I guess. I have a NASA disc with
>images of the entire planet, including the first "google map" type
>database of images from a lear jet at 40,000 feet.

Well it was more complex than just a database.

There were two computers - a Sony CP/M machine with Sony LaserDisk
Basic extensions that drove the Sony LDP.

There was a new IBM PC-XT - running the 'new' DOS 2.0 [which was
about 6 months old at that time].

The only input devices were a light pen on the Sony and a mouse on
the PC.

The text/pricing for parts on the PC was originally derived from
a dBaseII package but the data was being accessed outside that
package - each of us had a separate module we would work on.

The first LD screen had the main system with three divisions which
you selected via the light-pen. [I can't say a lot about this as I
don't know which parts are still under the NDA].

This system was about $10K to $15K by the time you had both
computers, the laser disk player, and the four-color dot-matrix
printer with color banded ribbons, that came as part of the package.

The reason this was being done as the business had turned from
buying replacement machines to almost entirely parts replacements
and rebuilding the original.

The paper catalog was gigantic - like one of the huge automobile
parts catalogs that takes up most of a counter - about 3 to 4 feet
wide - and probably in the neighborhood of 10,000 pages.

The catalog was hard to update - as in getting the information to
the clients and having them insert/change the proper pages.

They charged $5000 for the catalog, and the last printing of the
catalog cost them $50,000 and only 15 people ordered the catalog.
The catalog covered 54 machines - that is not a typo - fifty-four
machines - and I don't suspect you'd could buy one for much under
$100,000,000 - maybe $50,000,000 for the smallest.

So the idea was to put in a hardware/software solution for the
client and then be able to update the software by shipping 1 or 2
floppy disks by air to anywhere in the world. The machines were
in Asia, Europe, and North America, and I don't know if there were
any other countries.

So when you selected the main part of the machine you wish you went
to a parts-explosion page - just like an automobile parts book.
And there may be sub-pages.

All the selection was done with the light-pen. When you got to the
screen you wanted the pieces all had lines going to little boxes
around the screen - emulating a parts-books as closely as possible
- and you placed the light-pen on that box.

The the Sony computer which already knew the frame of the disk you
were on, got the information as to what box on the screen you were
on, and passed that information to the PC via a serial port to a
custom serial program on the PC, which then displayed the sceen
with the parts you wanted on it.

The you would take the mouse on the PC and click on the part you
wanted. Because there were no keyboards anywhere - you clicked as
many times as you wanted parts.

The customer could then build a parts list and price structure to
take to the management to get aproval. The parts were categorized
into three types - ones the manufacturer had in stock and could
ship, one the manufacturer had to buy and then ship, and the hard
part - the ones that had to be manufactured. On the latter some of
the parts had a lead time for manufacturing of 1 YEAR. Big pieces
that were quite precise.

The problem with something as extensive as this is the customer
could easily get lost in the parts catalog - so when they had a
problem they'd pick up a ring-down phone and talk to the
manfacturer. [A ring-down phone - that's what they were called then
- was a direct connection where you picked up the phone and the
corresponding phone rang at the far site].

The customer would then talk to the support at the manufacturer.

In the meantime the customers computer would dial the manufacturers
site via modem and transmit the frame number they were on to the
manufacturers machine.

The support person would push some key and it would sync his
machine to the customers so he could see what was going on.
Then when he could see the customer was at the wrong screen the
support person would also make another selection, choose the proper
screen on his side and transmit that to the customer side.

So we were in essence servo-controlling two laser-disk players via
modem.

It was a challenging and fun project. A friend of mine got called
about 1 1/2 weeks before it was due as the project was less than
10% complete at that time. He called me and it was 12 days of
18 hours for two of us and about 8-10 hours for 3 others who came
in after their work days.

We turned it over to them 2 hours before deadline with 99% of
everthing functioning. The only part that was not implemented were
the chair sensors that started up the system when you sat down.
But when a person signed on it did look at the system clock and
play a track from the LD that said 'good morning', 'good afternoon'
or 'good evening'.

They never did implement that product for that division, but I
understand it was used for the parts division of their bus
manufacturing line.

Doing something like that today with CDs, DVDs, etc., all with one
machine would be far easier than what we did. If it were only
as simple as "Oh boy. A database". :-). It was linking them all
together that was the challenge.

And for the demo there was a customer site and a manufacturer site
sitting side by side in a large room. So everyone could see what
was going on these were on Sony 27" projection TV - which were
quite a rarity in 1983. That was why the person who was doing the
LD mastering had his techs modifing the output cards on the PC to
so that LD output and PC output could both be shown on the TV.

Interesting side note. The Sony CP/M computers had 3.5" floppy
drives - and this as my first introduction to them - October 1983 -
just three months before Apple was credited with 'inventing' them
for the MAC that came out in January of 1984.

Bill
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

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