AUG 7 1981 Agricultural Economics Library
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS AUG 7 1981 Agricultural Economics Library Our Experience With Choosing and Using Microcomputers in California By Ken tf:::son & Gordon Rowe Invited Paper, Western Agricultural Economic Association July 19-21, 1981 Olson an.cl Rowe are Economists with Cooperative Extension, University of California, stationed at Davis and Berkeley, respectively. Our Experience With Choosing and Using Microcomputers in California In this paper we will discuss our experiences with microcomputers. First, a discussion of our considerations in selecting hardware and software. Second, a discussion of our current uses of the microcomputer and our future plans. Our experience using computers in California goes back to the use of IBM's 701, their first computer at Berkeley in the early 50's. Since then we have seen growth of computer facilities at the various campuses and in depart ments. Cooperative Extension in California has shared in the use of computers with ARE at Berkeley since 1955 and purchased a mini in 1975 for ADP and applied research at Berkeley. We have seen the development and implementation of a vast amount of computer technology since our early days. This has lead us to microcomputer applications which we began in 1979. A Cromemco 22-D (64k and 2 mini drives) with TI R0-810 printer and SOROC 120 CRT as peripherals. This initial system has been expanded to include a Micro B terminal with all its options including an 8085A processor, Persci quad capacity 8" drives, a 26 megabyte hard disk system from Morrow and telecommuni cations hardware including a DC Hayes micro Modem board and more recently Cromemco's I/0 processor and quadart board. The Cromemco hardware and its associated software provide for asynchronous and bisynchronous communication with band rates of 110 to 9600. The bisync package supports IBM's 3270 protocol and port to port connnunication. -2- Another Z2-D with a 26 megabyte hard disk was put in at Davis this past year, providing for duplicate systems. Selection of hardware started with the CPU. An S-100 bus was the first requirement. The S-100 bus was created by MITS in 1975 and now has an IEEE standard. The S-100 bus offers more power and flexibility than integrated systems such as the TRS-80, PET and APPLE. There are close to two dozen differ ent manufacturers of S-100 bus far and away the most popular computer bus system. An S-100 system user can select from seven different 8-bit CPU boards (8080, 8085 8088, Z80, 6502, 6800, and 6809) and five different 16-bit CPU boards (9900, LSI-11, 8086, 28000 and Pascal Microengine). The new IEEE standard for the S-100 bus was designed to support the more powerful 8-bit (Z80) and 16-bit (e.g. Z8000) processors. Operating speeds up to 10 MHZ, 16 megabyte direct memory addressing range, up to 65k I/0 ports are a few of the S-100 features in the new standards. Our selection of peripheral equipment has varied. We have seen a number of new developments in printers and CRTs in recent years. We chose the TI 810 dot matrix printer as a well accepted printer. We did not select an impact printer because of the higher cost and the type quality of the dot-matrix printer was considered adequate for our use. Extension of our systems to accomodate word processing would likely lead us to add impact printers. The hard disk system by Morrow was selected on the basis of price, expected performance and interfacing available. Micah supplies the software package that provides for running CP/M and COOS. CDOS and CP/M are the two operating systems we use. Cromemco is licensed by Digital Research for use of CP/M data structures and user interface, COOS includes all of the 27 system calls of CP/M version 1.3. Thus we have compatability with COOS and CP/M and can take advantage of software developed under both operating systems. -3- We were looking for a system that was expandable and had an established reliability record. Since our original purchase of the Z2-D we have seen expansion to quad density, hard disk and telecommunication hardware and software. Cromemco will be out with a 800-1600 BPI tape controller and transport later this year which we expect to purchase. The 21 slot S-100 board makes it easy for us to expand our systems. We also anticipate Cromemco like other S-100 bus manufactures will move to 16-bit processors and that we will be upward computable with such a move. Whether we use CP/M 86 or look at UNIX is still a question. Our criteria for selection of the CPU was the most important aspect of hardware selection. In retrospect, we believe that our decision was a good one although today we would look seriously at other S-100 main frames as we did in 78 and 79. Using the Microcomputer We choose the microcomputer over other types of computers for several reasons: (1) Dedication to the user, (2) lower investment costs, (3) fixed costs vs. variable costs (with certain exceptions, and (4) many farmers, ranchers, and others in agribusiness are using or beginning to use microcomputers and we want to help them. We are using microcomputers in various ways now: handling data series, machinery, cost estimation and allocation, investment analysis, and simple statistical analysis. In all our software development we are striving to make the programs "friendly to the users"; that is, the program and instructions are easy to understand and use with very little coaching from an experienced user. -4- Economic time series data on California crops are maintained on the microcomputer. The data files are updated each year and the new data printed for distribution. This increases the ease of correcting and updating; thus, we hope the data will be distributed nPre often. Printing new, complete tables each time also gives a better appearance to the final product. We use Cromemco's DBMS package for this job -- we accomplished it without any programming effort. We have two programs for estimating farm machinery costs. Both use cost equations estimated and accepted by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers. The first program calculates the repair costs and fuel use and costs for farm machinery and equipment given initial prices and physical data. The program then prints tables of physical and economic data which we use in farm machinery cost publications. The second farm machinery program estimates costs for a given machinery inventory and then, on the basis of hours used, allocates fixed and variable costs between crops given a plan and a calendar of operations. Eventually, we will make this available to farmers for management decisions. Right now, we will be using it in research for calculating interrelated crop budgets on a multi-crop farm. We also are installing simple programs for investment analysis. These programs calculate net present value, benefit-cost ratios, internal rates-of returns and other analysis criteria. Data entry is part of the program. Other software which we are developing is a program to generate simple statistics: mean, variance, correlations, etc. There are statistical packages which can be purchased; we have decided to write our ·.own programs for these simple procedures. In the near future we plan to add regression to our software library; we have not decided whether we will purchase or write this software. -5- A colleague of ours in California, George Goldman, uses a microcomputer for research and extension work in conmn.mi ty development and growth. Bruce Davis and Ronald Faas will discuss similar methods shortly. We, and colleagues at Texas A&M and Oklahoma State have submitted a proposal for the development of a budget generator system for microcomputers. We plan to develop a system which will be based on education and experience from using the present Oklahoma State Budget Generator. We plan to incorporate crop and livestock enterprise budgets with fully developed machinery and irrigation subsections. Whole-farm budgets and cash-flow budgets probably will be incorporated into the system by splitting it into subsections and subprograms which will be called only when needed, we will be able to fit the size constraints of microcomputers. Apart from this larger budget generator system, we will be developing software for partial and cash flow budgets. These programs will be useful both in extension and research to serve as a framework for entering data from other sources, calculating the needed variables, and printing and resulting budgets. Further analysis can be done simply by adjusting the input data and requesting the budget again. Colleagues in the Land, Air, and Water Resources Department at Davis have adapted our irrigation cost program to reflect an engineer's viewpoint and have placed it on a microcomputer. Currently they have different programs for different methods of application. We are assisting them in refining and documenting their programs. We are in the process of adapting a farm management game to the microcomputer. The version we have has been and is operating on main frame computers in various states. The present version is for batch processing; we are reworking it into an interactive, user-oriented game. We foresee two versions: (1) a simple version with variable endogenous terms and -6- fixed exogenous terms and (2) an expanded version incorporating risk, uncertainty, policy, and perhaps other variables exogenous to individual farms. These versions could be used for teaching, extension, and research. We also find ourselves involved in marketing aspects along with activities related to the use of microcomputers in information systems development. A project on a system approach to the canning tomato inspection program carried out by the California Department of Food and Agriculture has been completed.