Age = Illness

[barrym95838]

In his prime, Björn Borg had a resting pulse rate of 35 bpm. His biological hardware was probably a bit more efficient than yours though ...

[BigDumbDinosaur]

barrym95838 wrote:

In his prime, Björn Borg had a resting pulse rate of 35 bpm. His biological hardware was probably a bit more efficient than yours though ...

These days, almost anything is more efficient than my physiology.

[floobydust]

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

On July 18 I was fitted with a pacemaker in an effort to control chronic bradychardia, which has dogged me ever since my open heart surgery last January. My pulse has dipped to as low as 46 beats per minute, causing me to nearly faint several times. Efforts to reverse the bradychardia with exercise and medicine have failed, leading my cardiologist to recommend the pacemaker implantation.

The implantation is general surgery and is followed by a one or two day stay in the hospital—I stayed one day. On the day after the surgery, I was visited by a representative from the pacemaker manufacturer, who tested the device and made initial adjustments to pulse rate and such. Followups at the cardiologist's office are required to "fine-tune" the device.

The pacemaker is of the three-wire type, one lead to pace the heart as needed, a second lead to read back the heart's electrical activity, and a third lead to act as common. The pacemaker not only paces the heart as needed, it records heart activity, which data can be uploaded to an external "base station." The base station, in turn, is able to upload the data to a monitoring center for review by a cardiologist. There is a push button on the base station that I can use to initiate the upload if I become aware of some sort of irregularity. That way, the doctor will see exactly what my heart was doing when it started acting up.

The particular pacemaker I have is made by Boston Scientific (ironically, Boston Scientific is located over 1000 miles from Boston) and has a useful life of 8-10 years, depending on how often it has to pace the heart and phone home to the monitoring center. I don't know if it has a 65C02 core in it, but given its capabilities and longevity, it wouldn't surprise me if it did.

It is possible for the cardiologist to program the pacemaker with a computer, as well as control it in real time, by placing a "wand" (antenna) by my chest. Manual control is how the pacemaker is tested for correct operation. It's a bit disconcerting to be sitting in the doctor's office and have him speed up or slow down my heart by moving his finger around on a touch-screen.

Sp far, I'm seeing some improvement with the pacemaker in operation—my pulse is more normal and I have more energy. This doesn't mean I'm up to speed, though. It'll be a while before I'll be ready to join the other athletes at the Summer Olympics.

Pacemakers... my Dad had one installed 15+ years ago, unit was from Guidant, which was acquired by Boston Scientific back in 2006, IIRC. His was the result being pushed really hard during a stress test, which resulted in some odd blips with his heart rate, followed by feeling really badly for a few days afterwards. That was followed by a monitor for a few days and they claimed his heart stopped some number of times. Hence they installed a pacemaker, nicked his lung in the process, which collapsed... then they set it to a minimum of 70 BPM (his health records for the past 30+ years has shown resting pulse rate in the low 50's). Needless to say, the pacemaker was firing continuously and he was jittery as hell constantly. His general practitioner finally convinced the cardiologist to reprogram the unit and get the rate down, which helped a lot. Now that he's pushing 90, he's on his second pacemaker, a Boston Scientific unit which can be linked via a laptop (the norm these days). They also replaced a heart valve over 10 years ago... claiming it was leaking... yet another mess... as he's never gotten back to where he was before the surgery. While some of these procedures really do help a lot of people, my Dad seems to be a case where the medical community really made his life much worse in a period of 5 years. Hes now a shell of what he was before the doctors talked him into all of this.... and they did pretty much the same to Mom 3 years ago... heart valve replacement, too many drugs that had bad interactions and her quality of life has also dropped drastically since. Bottom line, neither would have had these surgeries done knowing what the results have been.

However, I do realize that in many cases, these are necessary procedures for many people with medical conditions... if they improve the quality of life, then that's a wonderful outcome... but it's not always the case.... I guess I'm just venting a bit having witnessed all of this over the past 15 years.

[White Flame]

You are now officially a cyborg, and potentially 6502-based at that!

[BigDumbDinosaur]

White Flame wrote:

You are now officially a cyborg, and potentially 6502-based at that!

I'm tempted to call up Boston Scientific and see if I can find out what's ticking inside my ticker's electronic ticker.

[ttlworks]

...And then to buy a shirt which says "6502 powered".

[Mike Naberezny]

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

I'm tempted to call up Boston Scientific and see if I can find out what's ticking inside my ticker's electronic ticker.

I've been driving the same car, a 1998 Volkswagen Jetta, since 2002. I recently bought an instrument cluster exactly like the one in my car from a junkyard. It has a single unknown chip inside, which I desoldered and sent to Sean Riddle. He was kind enough to decap and photograph it for me. You can see from the photos that the chip has a WDC 65C02 core inside. That was a total surprise. I've been unknowingly driving with a 65C02 in front of my face for 16 years.

I thought I had a good story, but if you now have a 65C02 implanted, that's a much better one! I know you'd probably rather have a 65C816 but it's the next best thing. I think you should ask Boston Scientific or WDC about it. How could you not ask?

[BigDumbDinosaur]

Mike Naberezny wrote:

I've been driving the same car, a 1998 Volkswagen Jetta, since 2002. I recently bought an instrument cluster exactly like the one in my car from a junkyard. It has a single unknown chip inside, which I desoldered and sent to Sean Riddle. He was kind enough to decap and photograph it for me. You can see from the photos that the chip has a WDC 65C02 core inside. That was a total surprise. I've been unknowingly driving with a 65C02 in front of my face for 16 years.

Having a 65C02 in the instrument cluster likely explains why the car is still running 20 years after it was made. Had that been an Intel processor the car would have been running Windows and as we all know, anything running on Windows will eventually crash.

Quote:

I thought I had a good story, but if you now have a 65C02 implanted, that's a much better one! I know you'd probably rather have a 65C816 but it's the next best thing. I think you should ask Boston Scientific or WDC about it. How could you not ask?

I shot a query to David Gray at WDC to find out. If he can't tell me I'll call Boston Scientific. It probably would be the first-ever call they got from a patient wanting to know about the pacemaker's innards.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

I got a reply from David Cramer at WDC:

Quote:

Hi Bill,

Your (sic) entering into the robotic era and as they say “ the machines will win”. Hopefully you are doing well and that the new pacemaker works as designed.

Our technology is not used by Boston Scientific that I know of for that application. However it is used by St. Jude Medical for that application.

Keep up the good fight.

Best,

David R. Cramer

Dang! I can't claim to be 65C02-powered.

[Chromatix]

Quote:

…as we all know, anything running on Windows will eventually crash.

Three terrifying words: Windows for Warships.

[ttlworks]

It's fun to take a C64 + 1541 out of a box after 30 years of inactivity, to power them up, and it all just works without any problems.
For PCs, especially PCs with colored windows, I think it's different.

Well, at least now we know what to ask the doctor for before having a pacemaker implanted...

[BigDumbDinosaur]

ttlworks wrote:

Well, at least now we know what to ask the doctor for before having a pacemaker implanted...

Doctor: I'm recommending we implant a pacemaker to improve your heart function.

Patient: Does the pacemaker have a 65C02 microprocessor in it?

Doctor: No, it has an Intel x86 processor.

Patient: Would it upset you, doctor, if I get a second opinion?

[ttlworks]

Doctor: What's wrong with Intel X86?

Patient Short form or detailed story? Short form only takes two hours...

[BitWise]

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

Dang! I can't claim to be 65C02-powered.

Maybe you're PIC powered now

[Chromatix]

Or ARM. I think Cortex-M0 cores come in at less than 0.5mm^2 now, and they also have very fast FIRQ response due to the banked registers for that purpose. They're also literally *everywhere*.

I suspect a version specifically intended to minimise static power draw would be a bit bigger, mind, but still a reasonably small and inexpensive chip.