Paul:

After reading some of your emails concerning home-brewed engine management
systems, I started thinking that it might be fun to create an entire glass
panel for an aircraft.

Since I know you have machines that run old MSDOS, I looked for one of my
old compilers.  I havent written any DOS graphics stuff in probably 25
years, but thought I would give it a try.
I downloaded Turbo Pascal 7 from the web, and found some compatible video
drivers from somewhere in Denmark.
It seems the old 1980s video drivers were a far cry from what is found in
modern machines. After an evening of hacking around, I got the compiler to
run on my WindowsXP machine at the c: command prompt.

I looked at a couple of web sites for commercial glass panels and
implemented some of the features I saw into a little demo program I wrote.
Since I have no aircraft engine or sensors to tie into, I wrote a little
simulation routine which currently replaces routines which would check the
analog and/or digital ports.
I set the simulation routine to output data about once/second and display it
on the screen. I use a trig function to build some variability into the
simulated values so you can see if it is working.
None of the graphics produced are graphical images, They are all produced by
compiled mathematical functions in my program.

So if you are interested in trying it ... go to http://poplar.us/panel.zip
and download and unzip the zipped files into a temporary directory.

The executable file is 'panel.exe'
The BGI files are video drivers that worked on my Sony laptop
The CHR file is a font file for generating characters in graphics mode.

I don't have a virus checker on my old laptop, but I reinstalled XP on my
machine not long ago, so it probably is clean.

To test -  go to the temporary directory created above and run the
executable file,  Let me know if it works

Robin


Dig up an old obsolete windows computer and get DOS running.
If you need it I have it. Then I'll send you QB. Then I'll send you
the source QB code on a moving map program driven by a GPS.
Here are some screen shots.

-----------------------------------------------------

Here is a freebe.

I needed a quick way to convert from mm to inches. My PC board software is
in inches and half the part dimensions  in the world are inches and the
other half are mm. It is critical when laying out PC boards that you
know the exact size of the parts.

I wrote a program in QB that generated this table in about 10 minutes.
I screen captured it and pasted it into MS Paint and saved it as
a jpg. I could then insert it into a screen capture jpg from Digi Key
on cap capacitor sizes. The caps are major parts of CD ignition systems.

Paul Lamar


The table is good.

By the same token, you can type "7.5mm to inches" at a Google prompt
and it returns "7.5 millimeters = 0.295275591 inches" ..


Matt-

Great Matt. I'll have to try that. I tried to order some IR2155 from Digi Key
and they don't stock them. As far as I can tell there is no exact sub.
So I ordered from  Futurlec. Any feedback on them. It is hard to find
out where the parts are coming from. Perhaps China ?
I don't like typing my credit card into a web site.

The upside is no tax.

Paul Lamar

Paul, you might get an additional credit card with a LOW limit for
use on the web.  This would certainly limit your potential losses
from hackers.  It would also protect your main accounts from being
tied up while the bank tries to untangle your money.

Joel

Yes I thought of that. I'll see how this one goes.

Thanks Joel.

Paul Lamar