LOL!

At least it didn't follow up the counting sequence with some dark laughter
"HA HA HA HA HAAA" ;-)

This reminds me of a situation where a friend of mine was working on an
electronics project to enter in a competition. His idea was a device to aid
someone in doing CPR in an emergency <G>. It consisted of a 16C84 and an
ISD sound chip, all packaged in the case of a computer speaker with a few
buttons added to the front. It would present menus of options such as "Is
the victim a child? Press the left button if yes, the right button if no."
and interactively give you the appropriate instructions.

Besides the basic idea being a bit iffy, it had some rather funny quirks
(which wouldn't be very funny in a real cardiac arrest situation!).

First off, he was powering up the ISD chip at the same time as the PIC, so
sometimes the ISD chip would get go to the wrong address (but it was always
the same address range) on startup. So, to detect that problem, he recorded
"RESET! RESET! RESET!" on that area of the chip and provided a reset button
on the front panel. I can just see it now, someone goes down and you pull
out your trusty CPR helper and hear "RESET! RESET! RESET!"

Secondly, because he recorded the various messages at different times,
their volume and tone of voice would vary, often in strange ways. It always
started out with the phrase, "LAY THE VICTIM ON THEIR BACK!" in a very loud
tone, followed by a much softer "chech their airway" or somesuch.

During the CPR period, it would time breaths for you by remaining silent
and then suddenly saying "Give a breath!" and then going back silent for
several seconds. I can just see this thing left innocently in a room where
someone was sitting, only suddnely to hear "Give a breath!" or "LAY THE
VICTIM ON THEIR BACK!"

Finally, it would sometimes go to the wrong message (I don't know if the
code was bad or if it just wasn't finished when he was showing it to me) so
it would ask if the victim was a child, and even when you said yes, it
would then proceede to some instruction which was only appropriate for an
adult.

Sean


At 03:51 PM 1/28/00 -0800, you wrote:
>Hi All!
>
>This reminded me of a funny story concerning this chip.  It was many
[SNIP]
>on the circuit board because all of a sudden (At now full volume) This
>little proto board came to life  with ONE...TWO...THREE..... In a very
>robotic voice!!!  I nearly pooped my pants.  I thought the earth had
>opened and Satan himself was com ming to get me.  I turned everything
>off, put my heart back in my chest and went to bed vowing never to
>work that late again.
>
>Regards
>
>Dave Duley
>
|
| Sean Breheny
| Amateur Radio Callsign: KA3YXM
| Electrical Engineering Student
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