ROVER HAS SPIRIT BUT NOT ENOUGH MEMORY

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

[ Guess the guys missed the software engineering classes at school djf]


ROVER HAS SPIRIT BUT NOT ENOUGH MEMORY
from The Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

The malfunctioning of NASA's Spirit rover on Mars was apparently caused by
a memory shortage that sent the craft into an endless cycle of computer
reboots, officials at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said Monday.

Like an underpowered home PC, Spirit does not have enough random access
memory, or RAM, to juggle the massive number of data files it accumulated
during its flight to Mars.

The rover's on-board computer has 256 megabytes of flash memory, which is
like the memory cards in a digital camera.


-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/