Simple PhotoCell Timing System
(S.P.T.S.)
COMPUTER REQUIREMENTS
(c) Bryan Brown & Art McEwen 1997-1999
All rights reserved, not to be copied without permission.
All Scuderia McEwen software is designed to run on the most basic machines. We encourage the use of old hand-me-down or second hand computers, such as 80286’s, 386’s or 486’s. These are reliable old workhorses and it seems a shame to see them sitting in a closet gathering dust.
Our original track machine was an 8088 IBM PC which worked beautifully, but at 4 mHz, we found that it had trouble processing all of the code that we have been continually adding to the programs lately (ie our "enhancements").
Laptops work fine and are convenient but those monochrome displays leave a lot to be desired.
We have a number of users that are using Pentium 400mHz machines (and above!!), which seems like an awful waste of computing power. These are machines I drool over!! Oh well, if thats what is available. CAUTION - WITH THE NEWER AND MUCH FASTER MACHINES, WE ARE FINDING THAT SOME OF THEM HAVE PORTS WITH EXTREMELY HIGH INTERNAL RESISTANCES. This causes some minor, but easily solvable, problems (see Trigger Points and
Changing PCell Resistances ).
A CGA monitor is all you need for display but they are hard to find these days. Monochrome displays will work but you miss out on all the captivating colour! The most common monitors, VGA and SVGA, work fine. You don't need a huge monitor, as most Scuderia McEwen software has the Large Display feature which makes viewing easy anywhere in your race room.
You also need a parallel port (LPT1/2/3) to get the signals from the track to the software. If you are lucky enough to have two LPT ports on your machine (or a printer switch box) you can print any screen directly from CHITI or ENZO or LEMANS (or any Scuderia McEwen product) directly to the printer using Shift+PrtScrn. All computers come with a parallel port.
You also need a hard drive to store the SCUDM directory. The entire Scuderia McEwen software kit requires less than 1MB of disk storage. It's hard to find a machine these days that doesn't have a hard drive.
CAUTION - do not touch bare wires from the LPT port together without some resistance in the circuit (such as a PhotoCell) or it may blow out your I/O board circuitry.
Last Updated April 21,2000
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