Military-spec PCs tackle rough shop floors

A Dolch Computer Systems (UK) product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Feb 25, 2003

A new ultra-rugged portable PC is designed to withstand the tough conditions found in military and similar harsh industrial environments.

A new ultra-rugged portable PC is designed to withstand the tough conditions found in military and similar harsh industrial environments.

The MilPAC family of off-the-shelf PCs also sets new standards for affordability, even for the top-of-the-range model that features IP65 sealing, 40g shock resistance and a 2GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor.

The MilPAC boasts an impressive environmental specification (to MIL-STD-810E), with a sturdy corrosion-protected aluminium enclosure sealed to IP54.

The units have an operating temperature range of 0 to 45C (and a non-operating temperature range of -10 to +60C), and the ability to withstand a relative humidity of 20 to 90%, a maximum altitude of 4571.8m, an operating shock load of 10g and a non-operating shock load of 30g.

Customers can choose between the MilPAC P-III that has a 1GHz Pentium-III processor, 256Mbyte of SDRAM, and a 20Gbyte EIDE hard drive, or the MilPAC P4 that benefits from a 2GHz Pentium 4 processor, up to 2Gbyte of DDR RAM, and a 20Gbyte EIDE hard drive.

If extreme circumstances dictate that even better environmental protection is required, both the P-III and the P4 are available to MilPAC Plus specification.

This enhanced configuration broadens the operating temperature range to -10 to +50C (and the non-operating temperature range to -25 to +70C), with sealing to IP65, an operating shock resistance of 15g and a non-operating shock resistance of 40g.

For especially cold environments, Dolch can also supply units that will operate at temperatures as low as -20C.

All MilPAC units are supplied with an integral 14.1in daylight-readable colour TFT screen with a resolution of 1024 x 768pixel.

A choice of operating systems can be specified, including Microsoft Windows 2000, NT and several others.

A floppy disc drive and a CD drive are provided as standard but customers can upgrade the latter to a CDRW drive if preferred.

Any AC power supply from 90 to 250V (47 to 60Hz) can be used, as well as 12-32V DC.

There is also an optional integrated UPS (uninterruptible power supply) function that permits operation for up to 20min in the event of an external power failure.

Customers can also specify any of three alternative keyboards: a mini-size conventional keyboard (unsealed), an IP65 foil keyboard or an IP65 rubber keyboard.

For each of these, the corresponding pointing device is, respectively, a mini trackball, mouse pad or Hula Point (finger mouse).

Applications for the MilPAC are likely to extend beyond military environments to include any remote field service, on-site maintenance, flight-line systems analysis, geophysical exploration, shipboard exposure and factory floor environments.

Because of the wide variety of applications, the MilPAC provides a total of three PCI expansion slots (two full size, one half-size).

PCMCIA (2 type II or 1 type III) is available as an option (uses the half length PCI slot).

Furthermore, the MilPAC is also extremely well equipped with external interfaces; these include a VGA display port, two USB ports, two RS232 ports, one parallel port and a RJ45 LAN port.