A power room monitor based on a MS-DOS computer

The authors describe the design process in the development of an intelligent power room monitor. The monitor combines PC-compatible hardware with application software developed using the C language. To bring a product to market within the time and resource constraints a means had to be found to provide specialized functionality using low-cost, readily-available building blocks. The computing platform chosen was a standard PC-compatible motherboard. Several MS-DOS-compatible hardware options were evaluated on the basis of reliability, compatibility, availability and cost. Development languages considered in the final selection process included Pascal, Modula-2, and C.<>