Dealing With Obsolescence

 


    		 

    A Lease Of Life For The Prime Movers Of Modern Civilization

     

    Rarely used missiles, heavily used missiles & power plants created at enormous costs in the 60's and 70's are controlled by VAX / PDP based hardware

     

    VAX / PDP - 11 MIGRATION

     

    • Prime Movers to Modern Civilization have existed since 1960’s, and are controlled using VAX/PDP based Systems

      • Thermal Power Plants

      • Process Control Infrastructures

      • Defense & Aviation Systems

    • Software and Control Logic is proven, rock-solid and reliable.

    • Technology has changed and VAX/PDP-11 are obsolete.

    • Repair and maintenance is virtually impossible.

    • Stocking media and hardware for eternity is not an option

    • Consequences of replacement ?

      • Expensive

      • Downtime during transfer

      • Software still needs to be tested for reliability and stability

       

    • The right balance:

      • Migration of the VAX/PDP-11 Operating Environment on modern computers

      • Replacement of tape-drives and other hardware interfaces with newer technology, allowing the same control software to be used.

       

    • Migration Encompasses the following:

      • Complete PDP/VAX System Migration

      • Migration with legacy User I/F Cards

      • Migration with redesigned I/F Cards

       

    • Projects Undertaken:

      • Indian Air Force - PDP11/24

      • Indian Navy - Micro VAX-3200

      • BEL Bangalore -Micro VAX-11/750

      • Indian Tobacco Company -VAX 4100/3100

      • Durgapur Steel Plant-

        • MICRO VAX 3400

        • MICRO VAX 3600

        • VAX 4100

        • VAX 4200


            

     

     MIGRATION ARCHITECTURE

     

     

    MIGRATION TO SUPPORT OLD / RE-DESIGNED INTERFACE CARDS
     

    ATENA II MISSILE TEST BENCH: A MIGRATION CASE STUDY

    PDP - 11 Legacy

    • Testing the MATRA (Infra Red) Magic and RADAR Homing Missiles

    • Replacement of the obsolete PDP11/24 Hardware and DSD 880 Memory Unit with a PDP11/24 Emulator Running on the Pentium IV based PC Platform

    • All obsolete peripherals of the PDP-11 Hardware such as Disc, Unibus etc. was emulated on PC platform, while retaining the Unibus Interface to the Atena-II Test Bench

    • Re-use of the Time-tested and proven original software by migration from DSD800 to PC Platform.

    • Specialized Unibus peripherals can be connected to emulated PDP-11 systems through Unibus Adapters.

    • The adapters provide connection between PDP-11 backplane and a PCI slot in the host system. The hardware peripherals that must be maintained are left in the backplane.

     

     
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