cajundsl
cajundsl Denver Qwest
join:2003-02-05
Denver, CO
| reply to en102
Re: Solved
I remember back during the heyday of the Altair 8080 reading that one of the original applications of the Intel 8008 chip that ran it was... to control traffic signals. And you guys are, of course, right - the world is full of things like the BASIC Stamp that have on-chip RAM and ROM and can be burned with all the software required to operate a traffic light.
All I can figure is that the things we see on street corners are over-engineered so that when one fritzes out and causes two city buses to collide head-on (or something equally bad) that during the trial, the highway department can point to the puke-green vault looking thing and say "But we took every precaution, spared no expense to assure the public safety." |
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en102
Canadian, eh?
join:2001-01-26
Valencia, CA
 ·RoadRunner Cable
 ·DSL EXTREME
| reply to djrobx
I agree... those stop light controller boxes are at EVERY intersection here in Santa Clarita, and by comparison, make VRAD look insignificant in size and the amount of them.
I programmed a PIC microcontroller in college to run a stoplight controller (RISC assembler) , and it was no larger than the size of a piece of toast. |
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