Past, present and future of a commercial, graphically oriented control system

Abstract This paper presents the past, present and future of a graphically oriented control system originating at Los Alamos National Laboratory and first seen at the Control Systems Conference at Villars in 1987. As a result of interest since that conference, the need for a high-quality, standard, supported control system was identified. A software technology transfer of this control system is being made to Vista Control Systems, Inc., which is currently enhancing and commercializing it as a supported product. The control system will soon feature enhanced drawing tools, an improved hardware interface and an integrated use of CAMAC and VME. Future advances will include an X-Windows man-machine interface, a graphics sequencer, enhanced network-wide database access routines using DECNET and TCP/IP, and more flexible and powerful hardware database access.