How to force a thread to stop

[H J van Rooyen]

"Gerhard Fiedler" <gelists at gmail.com> wrote:

| On 2006-08-03 06:07:31, H J van Rooyen wrote:
|
| > Thanks - will check it out - seems a lot of money for 555 functionality
| > though....
| >
| > Especially if like I, you have to pay for it with Rand - I have started
| > to call the local currency Runt...
|
| Depending on what you're up to, you can make such a thing yourself
| relatively easily. There are various possibilities, both for the
| reset/restart part and for the kick-the-watchdog part.
|
| Since you're talking about a "555" you know at least /some/ electronics :)

*grin* You could say that - original degree was Physics and Maths ...

| Two 555s (or similar):
| - One wired as a retriggerable monostable and hooked up to a control line
| of a serial port. It needs to be triggered regularly in order to not
| trigger the second timer.
| - The other wired as a monostable and hooked up to a relay that gets
| activated for a certain time when it gets triggered. That relay controls
| the computer power line (if you want to stay outside the case) or the reset
| switch (if you want to build it into your computer).
|
| I don't do such things with 555s... I'm more a digital guy. There are many
| options to do that, and all a lot cheaper than those boards, if you have
| more time than money :)

Like wise - some 25 years of amongst other things designing hardware and
programming 8051 and DSP type processors in assembler...

The 555 came to mind because it has been around for ever - and as someone once
said (Steve Circia ?) -
"My favourite programming language is solder"...  - a dumb state machine
implemented in hardware beats a processor every time when it comes to
reliability - its just a tad inflexible...

The next step above the 555 is a PIC... then you can steal power from the RS-232
line - and its a small step from "PIC" to "PIG"...

Although this is getting bit off topic on a language group...

;-)  Hendrik