6.033: Hands-on Assignment (Therac-25)
Now that you have had a bit more experience with systems and a better understanding of concurrency issues, we revisit the Therac-25. As you may already know, Nancy Leveson, the author of the Therac-25 paper, is now a professor at MIT studying software safety. While not the focus of her current research, she does maintain the Therac Evaluation and Analysis Laboratory. The TEAL has an original unmodified Therac-25, which allows the situations described in the paper to be reproduced in a controlled setting.
As you should remember from the paper, the Therac-25 has an operator interface where key input parameters are entered. The interface looks something like this:
Simulator commands: Beam Type is either 'X' or 'E' The ENTER key for fast input is not working today Command is either 'B' for beam on, or 'Q' for quit simulator
Before continuing further, re-familiarize yourself with the interface by re-reading the sidebar "The operator interface." You may also find the description on page 27 (hardcopy) useful.
