At  09:39 AM 9/18/00, Tom Hula wrote:
>There are different theories ... one is that the application itself, which
>is DOS-based, is the culprit. The other is that we are somehow getting
>feedback from the saws into the computer. We have looked at grounding (one
>of them was not at one time) and the saw operators now turn the saws off
>when they go on break to allow the static electricity to settle down, and
>that seems to have helped some.

If you think the problem is electrical feedback of some kind from the saws
(which seems plausible to me) the solution might be an optical
isolater.  That's basically a datacomm widget which converts the electrical
RS-232 (in this case) signal into fiber optics then converts it back to
electrical.  Because there is no electrical conduction of any kind all the
through from one end of the line to the other there's no way for electric
noise or other events to pass through.  The most that gets taken out is the
optical isolater.  It's the ultimate in surge and noise
protection.  Haven't noticed them in a while, but such things used to be
listed in catalogs of datacomm hardware.

--
Jeff Woods
World's smallest political quiz: http://www.self-gov.org/wspq.html


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