I started with Zx Spectrum 48K in 1984. Then i used also my sister's Amstrad CPC512 (CP/M, word processing). In 1989 i started with Commodore Amiga 500 and in 1992 I got my Amiga 3000T....(the best computer i ever had ;) ). In 1993 i bought a PC to use CAD software for building expansion cards for my Amiga 3000T. After 1996 i solely use PCs :confused: and little endian architectures.....

Observation = Interaction. This is not understood by the software guys because in software Observation != Interaction. Software Terms: Observation is reading a variable or using a method to read an internal state. Interaction may inherit data manipulation (modification or write) to the element. Hardware Terms: I will put a real life example to be understood: I have a microprocessor that does not work. The main loop does not work at all and seems dead. I place the oscilloscope on its crystal clock generator and oops! everything works fine. Even if i remove the probe (or may be not). In real life observation is often interactive, either because the probe capacitance added to the inspecting circuit or a photon needed to read an atom's state. We disturb things in order to observe. However for most real life application this disturbance is insignificant and can be ignored, thus misleading us to the Observation != Interaction principle.

I have investigated in the past the SSD technology and there is not an easy decision. You should select very carefully the SSD part to check wear-leveling algorithms, error correction strength etc. Also it depends from your OS. The numbers that the manufacturers present as a reliability are not representative (ie. 20GB/day for 10 years). According to these numbers there would be no question. However nobody states that the least erasable sector is 128K (or more) so if you need to update one byte in the file you will need to erase 128K bytes (or consume a new sector). Of course this could be refined and minimize this to 4K sectors. Nevertheless although you might write 1byte, you consume 4K and thus the numbers changes. I would propose that if you have linux you can place your OS there in read-only mode (place temp and swap partitions to a standard HDD). Also you can save there your data. However keep in mind that the data retention on SSD is 10years (you can just write a cron script to copy the files once per 2 or 5 years :laugh: ). If the application that handles the data does not do many write access (either append or change) you are pretty safe. In case of windows i would recommend to place the OS on a HDD. The application could be to a SSD (assuming that these do not do heavy write activities inside their directory). You can use the sysinternals diskmon tool to gather actual read-write events to your HDD. Then you can make a histogram on Excel and see how many writes your system have. I believe you can select which disk to check. Regards

There are many ways to accomplish this: 1. Using a PC and a phone (connected with serial cable). 2. Using a microcontroller and a phone or GSM module. 3. Using PC and microcontroller and phone. Obviously the third option is redundant. Now regarding the which way to go (option 1 or 2) this depends if: 1. You know how to program embedded systems (and you know the flow of programming ATmega) or you want to learn. 2. You are an experienced PC (Windows/Linux) programmer. As i am building embedded systems for many years i can provide you some info for the first option. 1. You can directly connect the phone to ATmega using the UART (of AVR). The phones normally have TTL logic level output for their serial port (and this is why you might need a level translator to RS-232 levels if you connect the phone to PC Serial port). Unless your phone provides a USB only connection (and this depends from the phone manufacturer and model) you can connect the ATmega to the Phone through the TTL serial port. I believe most elder phones have serial TTL interface. 2. The microcontroller have to drive the Relay(s).In the following link you can find way to do it (btw you will need similiar circuits if you drive from the parallel port): http://www.scienceprog.com/drive-relay-with-avr-microcontroller/[^] 3. You have to write the software on ATmega (obviously) to control the phone (i believe AT commands) get the messages and activate accordingly the relays. If it is of any help to you i have a relative article for a simple non-preemptive OS for AVR that you can use as platform to begin building your application. AVRILOS: A simple OS for AVR microcontrollers[^] Hope this helps.