Dr. Dobb's Journal March 2004
Long before being alternately dubbed The Future of Information Technology Today, or The Global Authority for Computing Technology, or for that matter The Magazine of Technology Integration, or even The Worldwide Computing Authority, the legendary BYTE magazine was simply known as The Small Systems Journal. Granted, "small systems" meant something different back then than it does now. What founder Wayne Green and editor Carl Helmers probably had in mind was anything smaller than a roomful of PDP-8s with 14-inch disk drives and high-speed paper tape readers/punches. Consequently, the first few issues of BYTE were chockfull of articles such as "Cassette Interfaces: Your Key to Inexpensive Bulk Memory," "Deciphering Mystery Keyboards," "Assembling Your Assembler," and "Computers and Amateur Radio," among others. What all of these articles had in common was that they described systems that would fit on a desktop—or, more likely, a workbench.
These days, "small systems" refers to really small—yet powerful and inexpensive—systems. Sure, desktop personal computers still rule the roost in terms of price/performance, but small systems now encompass everything from laptop computers to PDAs and RFID tags—and then some. For instance, the end-of-year inventory of DDJ's Department of Gewgaws & Gimcracks storeroom turned up GPS wristwatches, wireless indoor/outdoor weather stations, game consoles, solid-state MP3 music players, and the like. In addition to being small and cheap, what most of these devices have in common is that they're fast (many have 32-bit processors), have connectivity (wireless and/or Internet access), and are expandable (at least for the adventurous among us).
Nintendo's $70 GameBoy Advanced, for instance, is typical of these devices. With more than 100 million units shipped, it has a 32-bit ARM processor, color LCD, stereo sound, and runs for up to 15 hours on standard AA batteries. What makes it particularly interesting, however, is its cartridge slot, which opens up the device to custom expansion. (In an upcoming DDJ article, for example, we show how you can use this slot to turn the GameBoy into a powerful spectrum analyzer.) Likewise, hacking XBox or PlayStation 2 cartridge slots opens up a world of graphics and online access that we haven't seen since, well, the days when BYTE was still a small systems journal.
Okay, it's hard to think of a small system as being 105-feet tall, but, everything being relative, Greg Swecker's lone electricity-generating wind turbine fills the bill. (Wind turbines is a topic DDJ has covered before; see "Forth and Real-Time Control," DDJ, October 1998, in which William Stein describes an embedded controller for wind-turbine generators, and my editorial "Getting a Charge Out of the Future," DDJ, March 2002.) Swecker bought a 65-kilowatt turbine for his Iowa farm, planning to sell surplus electricity to the local electrical co-op. However, the Midland Power Cooperative is refusing to pay Swecker the same price it pays for electricity from big coal-burning electricity-generating plants—even though the Public Utilities Regulatory Policy Act (PURPA) of 1978 requires it to do so. In the meantime, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has ordered Midland to connect Swecker's small turbine to the electrical grid, although the co-op is appealing the ruling. If the order holds up, it will be a big victory for small systems in general, and wind generators in particular.
Laptop PCs are still considered small systems and I recently bought one—a refurbished Dell Inspiron 600. Alas, it randomly locked up out of the box. While the randomness made me suspect RAM problems, I followed all of the suggestions on the Dell support web site. No dice. I then began calling tech support, getting three different support technicians in India over a period of several days. While polite, not one technician had an inkling of what the problem might be as they went down their choreographed checklist of questions and suggestions. Nor did they call back when they promised to do so. Finally, on an early Saturday morning, I again called and got a support engineer who was—to my surprise—in Idaho. Within minutes, he'd zeroed in on the problem (yes, it was flakey RAM) and new memory modules were overnighted to me. The system works fine now and I'm pleased with it, although not with Dell's support for "home" customers. (Recall Dell recently moved its "corporate" support back to the U.S. because of complaints like mine, but from corporate customers.)
What I learned was this: If you call customer support for companies (like Dell), which have outsourced to India (or elsewhere), call early in the day (say, 7:00 am EST) when it's likely late night or early morning for offshore support, which may have a skeleton crew (or even be closed), giving you a better chance of being routed to a knowledgeable engineer at a U.S. support site. Getting up early is a small price to pay to talk to a qualified engineer.
Jonathan Erickson
editor-in-chief
jerickson@ddj.com