dgoad

Hello qldit,
Yes, I have been around the block a few times. I am an engineer with Rocketdyne. We have been owned by several major companies over the years. Rockwell Int, Boeing and now Pratt Whitney under United Technologies. I have been working on the space shuttle rocket engine program for the last 30 years. I think I still remember transistors. I was bread boarding motherboards ( they did not have any at that time, late 70's ) with the 6502 and the 8080/8085. I have designed a lot of custom stuff we use in the space program. I have had the experience on not only working on the design or the only one on the design, but also working on building and packaging the electronic equipment. I even got written up in the NASA Tech Briefs may years ago for a little invention of mine. We had two computer acquisition system that were running in real-time and only had a few milli-seconds of processor time available to fetch more data. They just could not handle the extra task that was needed. So, I invented these two cards that plugged into each of the computers with a cable attached between each card. These card's only overhead to each system was a little power. The card in one of the systems literally watched for a new data frame coming across the bus and stole it without the first computer knowing about it. It then send the data to the other card in the second computer. This card placed the data into a block of memory that the second computer had access. The code was changed slightly to let the second computer fetch this block of data and it was on its way. These cards had small micro controllers running the show, but the other two systems did not have to stop what they were doing. When they needed the data it was there and they did not have to go get it. That was pretty cool stuff in the mid 80's. I have been blessed with a very good job and great people to work with. I think I have done about all stages of the job from electronic tech, lead tech, programming and instrumentation engineering. On the side, I worked on and repaired a lot of commerical ( ALTEC etc. ) sound amplifiers and band amps and things. I still enjoy working on one every now and then for the church or local business or a friend of mine. But, now it is just keeping the kids stuff running. Computers, Cars and fixing the house keeps me pretty busy. That reminds me that I should receive the car computer on Wed or Thursday.
I was going over the last thing my son remembers doing with the engine and low and behold he told me that he did have to jump the truck several time and that one of the guys he works with did indeed arc the battery pretty good when he dropped the jumper wire. He thinks that some of the trouble started shortly after. He says that he really did not drive it all that much after that because of a car pool, but that it was going down hill.
I am going to put the old computer back in for a couple of minutes in a couple of days and put my oscilloscope on the injector wires and read them for my own data reference and then I will put the new CPU in and hope like heck it runs correctly.
I will post again in a few days. I just learned that his other ( I think a small Toyota ) car just crapped out. He thinks it is a head gasket. Now, it is also parked in my driveway leaking oil all over the place. I guess I should just put up a sign and advertise or set up my own firing range. Thanks,