Was there any scientific equipment made for Amiga?

[Nikodem]

There are various PC cards that were used in labs for data acquisition or controlling stuff - even quite old ones, from the '80s. Some of this cards were for measuring analog data some for digital etc.

Was there any equipment like that made for any amiga ever?

 

[Brian]

I'm pretty sure I came across some data acquisition stuff on evilBay at some point, but I can't remember the details. I nearly bought it just because it was something out of the ordinary until I saw the price of $1500 (or close to that). I think it included a card, cabling, and software/library to collect analog data such as thermocouples and millivolt signals. If I can dredge it up out of my memory, I'll forward along more details.

 

[rkauer]

NASA use to make their custom Zorro boards for data acquisition. I remember some of those for sale on the evil bay several months ago.

That and the A2000 gear NASA use to use.

 

[AndyLandy]

That and the A2000 gear NASA use to use.

I assume that for NASA to use them, they'd have had to be 'mil-spec' A2000s, right?

:run:

 

[Bad_Ad84]

I don't think everything has to be mil spec.

Look at the America air force using ps3's for example

 

[lostrego]

some more examples:

Some boards devloped for radar controlling stuff by James Cook University:

AD0200

AD0201

IO0100

Also remember something about medical devices like an ecograph device using the amiga or another alike scanner but I can't find anything.

 

[Merlin]

Older CNC-type stuff could be controlled by an Amiga, as they generally use RS-232 signals. You would just need to be able to format files in the syntax required by the machine.

Similarly, data logging might use serial or parallel data communications and programs are out there on Aminet that are maybe capable of this (ParNet, SerNet etc).

If an Amiga can sound sample, it can data log - you just need the right program and protocols.

You may need an analogue to digital converter if you plan to log data such as pH, temperature etc. as these are a voltage, not an on/off condition as per digital data. This is what a sound sampler is - an A to D converter.

 

[lostrego]

big LOL at the AD0200: "The card actually has a jumper labelled "sex and free beer" "

 

[rkauer]

The AD0201 have the same jumper. I doubt it will give anyone what it says.

 

[lostrego]

NASA use to make their custom Zorro boards for data acquisition. I remember some of those for sale on the evil bay several months ago.

That and the A2000 gear NASA use to use.

They've used also several towerized A4000Ds loaded with micronick zorro extender busboards to host those custom I/O cards.

A copy of the original article sitill here: http://www.polyphoto.com/upchug/AEcastro.html

A good read always, shame that their higher-res pictures (only thumbnails still there) are lost from the original web that used to host that article, I've a copy of the pics somewhere on an old hd or backup, I'll look if anyone interested .

What was more surprishing is that they used Amigas even until the late 90s, after several years since the collapse of Commodore.

 

[Bad_Ad84]

If its not broke, don't fix it. Especially if it required custom boards

 

[MZ3540]

That and the A2000 gear NASA use to use.

I assume that for NASA to use them, they'd have had to be 'mil-spec' A2000s, right?

:run:

Lol, so Mr Campbell was right all along.

Funny thing is, he used to blabber on about the A2000 being mil spec due to being German designed and built.
In reality however, the German ones are the crap that nobody wants.

 

[AmiNeo]

Wait, the US Airforce use PS3s?

 

[Nikodem]

NASA use to make their custom Zorro boards for data acquisition. I remember some of those for sale on the evil bay several months ago.

That and the A2000 gear NASA use to use.

They've used also several towerized A4000Ds loaded with micronick zorro extender busboards to host those custom I/O cards.

A copy of the original article sitill here: http://www.polyphoto.com/upchug/AEcastro.html

A good read always, shame that their higher-res pictures (only thumbnails still there) are lost from the original web that used to host that article, I've a copy of the pics somewhere on an old hd or backup, I'll look if anyone interested .

What was more surprishing is that they used Amigas even until the late 90s, after several years since the collapse of Commodore.

NASA still used 386 CPUs few years ago to launch shuttles, so I do not se anything strange in using an Amiga in 1998 by them .

Thanks guys for information. I thought that Amiga was not really used in the labs, but it seems that it was. Very nice! I would be glad if someone could post some info about utilizing Amiga in physical reserach.

 

[Bad_Ad84]

Wait, the US Airforce use PS3s?

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=usaf+ps3+supercomputer&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari

 

[BrooksterMax]

Was there any equipment like that made for any amiga ever?

If you (or anyone) have acaedmic journal access would be good to see pictures and diagrams for this, so how about.............

Molecular modeling on the Commodore Amiga.

.........This stereo image display system consists of liquid crystal shutter goggles attached to a control module on one mouse/joystick port and synchronized at 60 Hz with alternating left/right screen displays...........

.......The ease of video interfacing and the availability of stereo image display have stimulated several developers to begin assembling molecular modeling packages. At the National Biomedical Research Foundation the Amiga is being tested as an inexpensive stereo-image color graphics workstation for molecular modeling, biopolymer sequence analysis and medical imaging.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2018753

 

[Nikodem]

Was there any equipment like that made for any amiga ever?

If you (or anyone) have acaedmic journal access would be good to see pictures and diagrams for this, so how about.............

Molecular modeling on the Commodore Amiga.

.........This stereo image display system consists of liquid crystal shutter goggles attached to a control module on one mouse/joystick port and synchronized at 60 Hz with alternating left/right screen displays...........

.......The ease of video interfacing and the availability of stereo image display have stimulated several developers to begin assembling molecular modeling packages. At the National Biomedical Research Foundation the Amiga is being tested as an inexpensive stereo-image color graphics workstation for molecular modeling, biopolymer sequence analysis and medical imaging.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2018753

Unfortunatelly I do not have acces to this particular journal. I'll try to ask some friends, because they work in this field, so maybe they will have acces. At my university for molecular dynamics etc they used SGIs in the '90s AFAIK.

 

[tokyoracer]

NASA certainly had a fleet of A4000's, I remember seeing pictures of them with a NASA sticker on the front.

 

[lostrego]

.......The ease of video interfacing and the availability of stereo image display have stimulated several developers to begin assembling molecular modeling packages. At the National Biomedical Research Foundation the Amiga is being tested as an inexpensive stereo-image color graphics workstation for molecular modeling, biopolymer sequence analysis and medical imaging.

That may support the thing I was told long ago of the use of A2000 + video digitizers & framegrabbers to capture video feed by medical scanners like Echography devices and such, this makes a lot of sense as the Amiga was the only computer, since the mid 80s until well entered the 90s, capable of capture and process video stills or sequences at a reasonable quality & cost relation.

So probably this Video abilities of the amiga were also used in other scientific fields for that purposes like capturing video feed from somewhere, storing the stills on hard disk, editing that, printing the stills and such.


BTW going a bit off-topic, Does not anyone remember the complete Sony MSX2 setup that was aboard the Russian MIR space-station ?

 

[Justin]

http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/amiganasa_en.php