interrupts

I would always, where appropiate provide 'failsafe' but have yet to come across 'working with limited capabilities'

Now I am probably a little fish when compared to you, but yesterday I had a discussion with a colleague that worked for a company making communication equipment for trains and she seemed to contadict the above statement. In their products, when digital control is gone (processor fried, some software failure) they switch to analog control driven by a small CPLD, which has very limited capabilites indeed (due to hardware cost).

so the "digital control" is failsafe and if it fails the rest works with "limited capabilites".

where is the contradiction.

Most radio stations have a backup transmitter, a backup is not the main working with limited capabilities, it is a backup (which may have less power).

Erik

I would always, where appropiate provide 'failsafe' but have yet to come across 'working with limited capabilities'

Now I am probably a little fish when compared to you, but yesterday I had a discussion with a colleague that worked for a company making communication equipment for trains and she seemed to contadict the above statement. In their products, when digital control is gone (processor fried, some software failure) they switch to analog control driven by a small CPLD, which has very limited capabilites indeed (due to hardware cost).

so the "digital control" is failsafe and if it fails the rest works with "limited capabilites".

where is the contradiction.

Most radio stations have a backup transmitter, a backup is not the main working with limited capabilities, it is a backup (which may have less power).

Erik

Agreed, but consider the following: if your main controller and the backup run the same code and are generally the same system, it is very possible the even the backup will not deal well with the conditions that killed daddy (given that it is a software failure, of course). example? The Arian 5 self destruction...