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386er
Joined: 27 Jan 2007
Posts: 274
Location: USA
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Posted:
Sat Jul 31, 2010 1:18 am |
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just recently i was given a 3 week intern ship with bart, also known as bay area rapid transit. there big here in the bay area, www.bart.gov
i work in the electronic repair shop adding in parts into the shops repair logs and bring parts from the store to the shop and back down. its kinda neat looking at all the electronics on these cars. but the weirdest thing of all about the place is the technology. these cars are x86 powered. the propelsion systems are powerd by 8086's! and one of the other computer controls on every car is powered by a 25mhz 386 ex, soldered on a board to use in socketed 386 boards. these systems were first put online in the mid 80's heck, whats also cool is how they keep these things running, upgrading these old pc's and reverse engineering to make parts for them since there no longer in production, they got the comms computer with an 8086 that has a recently developed USB board for it. on top that, most the work pc's are pentium 1's or less. there 2 compaq portable I's that are used all the time for running simulators to test equipment. this place is a paradise for anyone who loves old tech. |
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ryan

Joined: 19 Apr 2006
Posts: 261
Location: WisConSin
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Posted:
Fri Aug 13, 2010 1:47 am |
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It would be nice if more places operated that way, much of the modern tech is pure crap and the associated software creates more work than it solves.  |
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bear

Joined: 04 Oct 2004
Posts: 205
Location: 57�59'N 15�39'E
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Posted:
Fri Nov 12, 2010 10:53 am |
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Sounds great I used to live in the bay area 76-84 and have used BART a few times  |
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