Monday, May 5th 2008 at 3.24am the computer controlling the truck broke down. When I reached the truck room, the computer was off and there was no way to power it back on, probably a power supply failure.

This computer has been controlling the truck for about 7 years, it was on 24/7 all the time.

As the relais card for the cam control broke down a while ago, it was not too hard to find a parallel port to do the job.

The old computer was running on Windows 98 - that's why I had to reboot it about once per week to make sure the timing for the bucket does not get too sluggish.

As the software to control the moves is written in Perl, I moved the whole stuff over to the better Windows - the linux server which runs the Webtruck.org CMS system.

With this new server, the controls work better.
Reversing is smoother now, so it is much easier to pick up blocks.

[Reversing is done by a a burst of 10 milisecond pulses as the switches used don't know a 'half on' position ]

Of course I have still plans to upgrade all the controls to more up to date hardware and reestablish the camera control - plans are patient...