Anyone else with an interest in Operating Systems (especially those used in medical equipment) might like to put on the kettle, make a cup of whatever, then set aside half an hour to wade through this lot. Enjoy!
Then, having digested all that (or at least, picked up the gist of it), we can kick off our own thread right here.
Feel free, by the way, to meander into the related pathways of hardware drivers, common interfaces (eg, RS-232, USB), the "slot"* technologies used in medical equipment, and all the rest.
* By this I mean ISA, PCI, AGP ... and all our other favourites!
I had been hoping that this topic might have sparked some interest!
Surely by now folk must have waded through the verbosity found at the link?
The short version is ... what operating systems are found in medical equipment, and what are their relative merits, strengths and weaknesses? Are they in fact (and to coin a phrase) "fit for purpose"?
So, come on ... it's an interesting enough topic. And one that we haven't "explored" on here before (as far as I am aware).
Not sure what the problem is. Most kit designed to work using a PC is desigend around that particular harware/ software/ OS combination. It will probably never change during the lifetime of the equipment. If the equipment fails catastrophically(?) then there may be a concern over availability for parts but manufacturers are "obliged" to fully support their equipment for at least 7 years after production ends. Mind you I don't think there's much we can do if they renege on the deal!
Yeah, I thought the guy who wrote that long piece was talking out of his RS-232, quite frankly. Software either works, or it doesn't. In general, the only "accidents waiting to happen" are those which have been known to arise with the passage of time, and at certain date roll-overs (as we saw with the much-hyped Y2K "problem", for example). Sloppy, or at least unimaginative, coding* in other words.
My own reasons for pursuing this issue here is to attempt to draw out feedback about a) Which OS's are popular in medical equipment these days (I saw a Storz - it may have been a Stryker - DVD recorder on a theatre stack that flashed the Windows 98 loading screen as it started up, for instance). And b) Is DOS still used? ... c) Comments about stability and reliability (eg, I find Win 2000 to be indestructable, myself ... and that's why I still use it). And d) Some kit probably uses its own proprietary code, I would have thought ... does anyone know anything about kit like that?
* I have a 1988 Psion with the same problem. Not to mention BBC Master computers (from 1985 and later). You would have thought they would have had enough confidence in their own product to expect it to last beyond 12 years (as indeed it has), would you not?
Meanwhile (and lastly, for today at least) ... does anyone have any thoughts, comments, or feedback on the current state of play regarding OS's for hand-held devices?
Or, put it this way (and linking in with "The Future of Biomed", and all that), if anyone was thinking about developing a database system for hand-helds (which, in my opinion, is "the future" ... if not the "now" - just like in Tesco's et al) ... which platform would be the one to go for?
BTW (and in case anyone had failed to grasp it), the image above is one of the infamous BSOD (PM me if you're still not sure what that means)!
As im sure I've mentioned before, we have 2 brands of linear accelerator here, Varian machines, which operate in DOS, and Elekta machines, which operate in Windows (XP i believe). No prizes for guessing which ones have to be rebooted on a regular basis due to "glitches".
I love deadlines, I like the wooshing sound they make as they fly by.
I'm pleased to note that the link in the OP still works!
Meanwhile, in more recent news ... it has been reported that the survey ship HMS Enterprise uses certain systems that rely on Win ME.
So what, says I ... if it works, best leave it alone.
But I agree that this may be the real (and interesting) reason:-
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I strongly suspect the reason for ME was the highly specialist kit that is attached to the systems. The ability to write to memory-mapped IO from user-space used to be a convenient shortcut for developers - avoiding the need to write device drivers (or possibly having to write them in order to port to a newer version of Windows). ME was the last version of Windows where this was possible.
Meanwhile, here's another "so what"! ...
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The next time you go into a Post Office and see them using the touch screen behind the counter be advised that under the counter is a Pentium 4 with 256Mb of memory running NT4...
