[MAX914]
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[AZ914]
-- T. Hannum
-- Brad's '70
--

[LINKS]
-- rennlist.org
-- all914.com
-- pelicanparts.com
-- paulweir.com
-- linuxdoc.org
-- epanorama.net
-- AZ PCA

Software

In order to build a system such as MAX, we need to use many pieces of software and glue them together to form a complete auto application. There is no need to reinvent the wheel though, so below I have listed the software and versions that MAX currently runs off of. This list is in aphabetical order, and not nessecarily the order in whic the software must be installed.

Festival - www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/
-- Festival Speech Synthesis System, developed at CSTR, University of Edinburgh by Alan W Black, Richard Caley and Paul Taylor and others (see ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS file for full list). This text is taken right from the README with the software.
-- Festival offers a general framework for building speech synthesis systems as well as including examples of various modules. As a whole it offers full text to speech through a number APIs: from shell level, though a Scheme command interpreter, as a C++ library, and an Emacs interface. Festival is multi-lingual (currently English, Welsh and Spanish) though English is the most advanced.

LCDProc - lcdproc.omnipotent.net
-- We will be studying and using the code from this project to work to make our serial terminals with displays and keypads. More to come on this package in the next few weeks as I get MAX installed into the car. At this point I will have to create a terminal so that I can view information or hear information while driving.

PostgreSQL 7.0.3 - www.postgresql.org
-- Fast, robust, advanced data storage. PostgreSQL is both a RDBMS and a Object based database system. Meaning that when we create a table named Sensor, we can have a new table named TempSensor2 inherit from its first table of Sensor. This is an important concept for use in databases as usually database engines where designed around the data storage in mind and not the access required by programmers. With PostgeSQL we get the best of both worlds.
-- If your asking why PostgreSQL over MySQL? I have used MySQL for a long time, but decided to switch when I entered this project as I feel that the power of stored procedures and triggers will be very valuable in storing data in a parallel system, and also manipulating that data with the database backend instead of having to use front end code. This allows us to scale better as we can always add another motherboard with another database processor pointing to the same files the rest of the Beowulf cluster is pointing to.

Slackware 7.1 - www.slackware.com
-- This is of course the base of the operating system. I am working on creating a new distribution that will be made to load and work specifically for automotive applications, but that is still a few months off. For now, I start with a base Slackware Linux installation of the A, AP, D, N sets. This gets us the basic apps, networking and all the development tools. No need to load X as of now as most interfacing with the system will be done through individual serial type consoles, or hand held computers connected via network or PPP.