Minicomputer—Automatic Analysis System for Pharmaceuticals

Abstract

Software has been developed for reduction of automatic analyzer data both for on-line and off-line modes, using a PDP-12 minicomputer with 8K core memory, magnetic tape and disk storage, a multiplexer and 16 channel 10-bit analog-to-digital converter, and a cathode ray tube. The on-line system performs data-logging onto magnetic tape of 16 instruments asynchronously, displaying any 2 analog-to-digital conversion channels on the cathode ray tube in real-time. Spectrophotometers are interfaced to the computer, using economically constructed operational amplifier circuits. Data reduction is aided by a hardware floating-point processor, using an 8-point least-squares fitting algorithm to digitally smooth the data array and determine each peak maximum. Computer results of 3 different systems operating simultaneously are compared to values obtained manually. The off-line system was written using FOCAL-12 conversational language and will accept digital values by Teletype, peak detector paper punch, or TWX; the latter makes the program available to other laboratories through the Federal Telecommunications TWX System.

Time-Sharing Minicomputer Data Acquisition-Processing System

“…The generated hard copy report, Figure 3, provides the percent of label declaration for each tablet, an average, and coefficient of variance for the sample. The calculation procedure has been previously reported in greater detail (23).…”

Time-sharing minicomputer data acquisition-processing system

“…The generated hard copy report, Figure 3, provides the percent of label declaration for each tablet, an average, and coefficient of variance for the sample. The calculation procedure has been previously reported in greater detail (23).…”