Lachlan passed away in January 2010.  As a memorial, this site remains as he left it.
Therefore the information on this site may not be current or accurate and should not be relied upon.
For more information follow this link
(This Webpage Page in No Frames Mode)

Welcome to Lachlan Cranswick's Personal Homepage in Melbourne, Australia

Homepage of the all knowing user deity of Daresbury Laboratory, Cheshire, UK : earth goddess to some; busty temptress to others; Dinah, sacred nymph within Dinah's Kitchen burger machine HFV (hot food vender)

Part of "Great Daresbury Laboratory Partheon of Junk Food Machine Gods" Web Ring of Destiny

(part of the Daresbury Laboratory Web Ring of Life, Cheshire, UK)
(Also refer to Vendtastic Burger Machine - possible future rival to Dinah's Kitchen burger machine HFV(?))
Lachlan's Homepage is at http://lachlan.bluehaze.com.au
[Back to Lachlan's Homepage] | [What's New at Lachlan's Homepage] | [ESRF Junk Food Machines]
Daresbury Laboratory Web Ring of Life:
[Ordering Pizzas while at Daresbury Lab]
[Junk Food Machines of Darebsury Laboratory]
[Pubs and Restaurants around Daresbury Laboratory]
[Taxi, Bus, Train, etc - services-information slightly relevant to Daresbury Laboratory]
[Earth Goddess Dinah] | [Technical Specs and History of Dinah] | [The Source that runneth Dinah] | [Irrelevant Links]

29th September 2001 update: The Bold Detective's previous investigations proove to be flawed and without foundation - St Dinah - that being the same as Dinah's Kitchen burger machine HFV (hot food vender) is alive and well. Plus information on what Dinah presently has to offer.

Click here to see how Dinah fits in to the "Great Daresbury Laboratory Partheon of Junk Food Machine Gods"
(Including reviews by they who have sampled what the "Busty Tempress" herself has to offer - and by those who would woo her)

All hail the great earth Goddess Herself - Dinah's Kitchen. For she has saved many a user from starvation. Without her most wonderous of blessings - the many dead would have piled high during synchrotron beamtime.

Dinah's Kitchen burger machine

From one who knows the miracles Dinah can perform

Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 21:00:56 +0100
To: Lachlan Cranswick [lachlan@ldeo.columbia.edu]
Subject: Did Campion Bond meet Mr Holmes?

Lacking

We should make a shrine for Dinah. I alone have seen 2 miracles 
there. And with no Henry VIII or Cromwell to destroy it, the
shrine to St Dinah, Busty Temptress, would last beyond Daresbury.

Cryptic Dinah Runes: "The ancient saga of the burgers of destiny"

Enter the sacrifice that is mystic ones
Select oblivion and thus be its servant
Panic not in the blackness of the void . . 
  for the earth goddess taunts the weak of will.
Attempt to conquer what tempts your evil soul
Then surrender to the futility of it all
Be not afraid to explore what the earth goddess has to offer.
Are you prime enough to receive the bounty?
Be crass with your whims and the earth goddess will approve.
Be magnificent once to make Dinah adore you, 
Less you must have no evil thoughts
But you have asked too much, No!, No! go back.
Turn round in time to observe her  . . 
  what your coward soul was afraid to grasp.
You are now one of the immortals; 
  outside the universe of known laws
Grab all that the busty one has to offer.
Dinah likes to give, but taking so much? . . . 
 . . . you fat bastard! you fat bastard!
Retrieve the sacrifice and continue your futile lives.
Glow in that for one short time you were blessed
By the most high of busty tempresses of all.

History and Technical Information on the mortal shell of Dinah

Dinah's Kitchen burger machine . . . Schematic of the Mortal Shell of Dinah 

To: "Lachlan Cranswick" [l.cranswick@dl.ac.uk]
Subject: Dinah's Vending Machine
Date: Tue, 8 May 2001 15:54:32 +0100

I found your website interesting, but do you still have dealings 
with the 'Dinah'. I am interested because I designed the electronics 
and programmed it between 6 and 8 years ago! I still think the machine 
is one of the best innovations there is. 

BTW Re: running out of stock... I did develop a small communications 
box with mobile phone and modem, and a receiving program for PC, 
that checked stock or problems on each machine, and produced a 
delivery manifest for each machine for drivers to deliver to, 
but customers thought they'd never need it!!!


To: [lachlan@ldeo.columbia.edu]
Subject: Dinah...
Date: Tue, 8 May 2001 23:51:21 +0100

Techie stuff...

The main computer was designed around an Intel 8031 development board 
called a UE31 developed by a guy called Gary Cole (I think!), with a 
64k paged EPROM... It also had 32k RAM, and could control 2 RS232 
Serial ports, including a 9 bit baud rate(!), and up to 64 input or 
outputs. It had 2 8255 PIA interfaces and much too much in the way of 
buffering and filtering for leaky Microwave ovens. This was the initial 
design for the machine...

Later models, including the one shown, had an extremely highly 
advanced bus system (only just being implemented by Coke now) which 
meant that all aspects are separately controlled in individual modules. 
This was better known as multidrop bus (MDB). In the HFV (codename for 
Dinah - Hot food vender) we had modules for Left oven, right oven, 
Primary power supply, Oven power supply, Freezer, Coin Mech (including 
change giver), Microwaves and extraction units. This way internal 
diagnostics could be checked out for each module up to 26 times a 
second (why 26, check the 8031 architecture!). This also meant that 
the main CPU going AWOL did not affect the cooking process of the 
ovens (2100W microwaves BTW) see below.

The machine was coded primarily in Forth (my choice!) because of 
speed and size of code. A lot of primary controls were transferred 
to ASM at a later date.

Interesting stories following the machine include the Microwave 
sticking on (several times!) for more then 3 minutes. And you 
thought the cheeseburgers were inedible before! Two lumps of 
black, sesame seeded charcoal, with no meat left at all; this 
was caused in the code by making it a '>' and not a '>=' (my fault)!. 
Also powering up the microwaves with the ovens open, and 
actually FEELING the microwaves from over 10 feet away (not my fault). 
Finally in a busy lunchtime the domestic microwave was on, so was 
the kettle, and someone decided to use the HFV, thus 
subjecting 1 4-gang power strip to >30A, and the building went 
dark (definitely not my fault).

Believe it or not there were only 4 of us in the development stages 
of the machine. John Reid (MD, and inventor of the magnetic tag 
system in most clothes shops nowadays.), John Winslow (Mechanical 
Director, and former Marconi guru.) Gerald Mitcham (Company Secretary, 
and practicing Magistrate/Tax Inspector/Naval Commander, sadly 
passed away a few years ago, but the most down to earth person I 
have ever had the to pleasure to know.), and Rik Hughes (technical 
director). 



To: "Lachlan Cranswick" [lachlan@ldeo.columbia.edu]
Subject: Re: Dinah...
Date: Wed, 9 May 2001 08:39:54 +0100


BTW have you ever wondered why you don't get pizza out of HFV? 
The oven is at a 50' angle, and so in heating all the topping 
slides off to one end.  

Yuck.

Some Forth Source Code about the mortal computational states of Dinah

Dinah's Kitchen burger machine 

To: "Lachlan Cranswick" [lachlan@ldeo.columbia.edu]
Subject: Re: Dinah...
Date: Sat, 12 May 2001 12:25:42 +0100

\ Automated Foods Limited 22/03/94 
\ MAINHFV WITHOUT DRIVERESET OR MAIN DISPLAY ROUTINE
\
\
\
: COOK      /Used to cook food
Mainpowersupply    /Enable main power supply
CSC @ $119 > IF  /If cook time more then 119 seconds,
 REFUND $FF $2D C!I    /give a refund
 FN0 OR0 STROBEIO    /turn off the oven relays
 $1 SECONDWAIT     /wait a second
 OV0 STROBEIO    /disable all oven transistors as well
 $1 SECONDWAIT     /wait another second
 DVIN      /recheck all driver ICs by resetting them
 BLANKDISP     /blank the display
 ABORT      /and crash out of OS, memory must be screwed
ELSE 
 CSC @ $60 > IF     /If cook time more then 60 seconds,
  CSC @ $60 - COOKTIMED !   /store cook time seconds 
/(variable only 2 bytes)
  HC1 LC1 $B1 CK1    /and cook for that long
  $59 COOKTIMED !    /and then cook for another 60 seconds!
  $B0 CK1 $0 CSC ! 
 ENDIF 
 CSC @ $0 > IF     /If cook time is normal (hopefully)
  CSC @ COOKTIMED !   /store it as a legit cook time
  HC1 LC1 $B0 CK1 $0 CSC !   /and cook it normally
 ENDIF 
ENDIF ;

: CKERR     /Routine to output serial previous errors
DUP $F0 AND CASE    /Is it an oven error?
$10 OF CR ." ERROR WITH HOT FOOD IN LEFT OVEN" ENDOF
$20 OF CR ." ERROR WITH HOT FOOD IN RIGHT OVEN" ENDOF
$30 OF CR ." ERROR WITH COLD FOOD IN LEFT OVEN" ENDOF
$40 OF CR ." ERROR WITH COLD FOOD IN RIGHT OVEN" ENDOF
ENDCASE 
$0F AND CR CASE
$00 OF ." NO ERROR" ENDOF
$01 OF ." OVEN NOT OPENING STAGE 1" ENDOF
$02 OF ." PRODUCT DETECTION MALFUNCTION" ENDOF
$03 OF ." TOO LONG TO PULL PRODUCT INTO OVEN" ENDOF
$04 OF ." NO PRODUCT IN OVEN" ENDOF
$05 OF ." OVEN NOT CLOSING BEFORE COOK" ENDOF
$06 OF ." MICROWAVE NOT ON" ENDOF
$07 OF ." MICROWAVE NOT GOING OFF" ENDOF
$08 OF ." REED RELAYS STUCK " ENDOF
$09 OF ." OVEN NOT OPENING AFTER COOK" ENDOF
$0A OF ." TOO LONG TO PULL PRODUCT OUT OF OVEN" ENDOF
$0B OF ." OVEN NOT CLOSING STAGE 2" ENDOF
ENDCASE ;

: GOHFV      /Main turnkey routine
INIT-SER      /Initialise serial port
CR ." AUTOMATED FOODS LIMITED " CR  /Show copyright messages
." DINAH'S HOT FOOD VENDER " CR
.FREE CR      /Show amount of RAM free
HEX $0 1LED $0 2LED $0 3LED $0 4LED /Clear display
CLD STROBEIO 
DVIN INIT      /Initialise all drivers
EI       /Enable interrupts
BDS SETUPSEGMENTS    /Setup display
CKFL CKSO CKPL     /Check RAM arrays
LC0 HC0 $59 C@I DSLI $58 C@I DSRI  /Display any money in the machine
SDIS LEDD 2+ @ $100 + LEDD 2+ ! LEDFETCH 
\ RUN LINE
BEGIN 
 0 TIMER0-TICKS ! RUN-TIMER0   /Clear any timer arrays
 KV1 FIN0 PW0 CM1 STROBEIO CV  /Reset IO into correct positions
 CKFL      /Check RAM
 CKSO 
 CKPL 
AGAIN ;     /do it again
MAKE-TURNKEY GOHFV

Slighly Relevant Links

[Earth Goddess Dinah] | [Technical Specs and History of Dinah] | [The Source that runneth Dinah] | [Irrelevant Links]
Daresbury Laboratory Web Ring of Life:
[Ordering Pizzas while at Daresbury Lab]
[Junk Food Machines of Darebsury Laboratory]
[Pubs and Restaurants around Daresbury Laboratory]
[Taxi, Bus, Train, etc - services-information slightly relevant to Daresbury Laboratory]
[Back to Lachlan's Homepage] | [What's New at Lachlan's Homepage] | [ESRF Junk Food Machines]
(This Webpage Page in No Frames Mode)
If you are feeling sociable, my new E-mail address is [address now invalid] (replace the *at* with an @ ) . Old E-mail addresses might be giving forwarding or reliability problems. Please use clear titles in any Email - otherwise messages might accidentally get put in the SPAM list due to large amount of junk Email being received. So, if you don't get an expected reply to any messages, please try again.