Amiga runs Michigan schools' heating and air conditioning systems (2015)
woodtv.comNASA also used Amigas - [0]
Gary Jones replied; "And Commodore was easy to work with back then. When we asked for documentation, they sent us a stack of documentation about four feet high. They were willing to tell us everything about their machine. Since we had to design some custom hardware to go inside, it really helped to know exactly how everything worked."
"It just turned out that it was a good machine. The things that make a machine good for playing games also tend to make it good for processing and displaying data, because you've got some of the same problems. You need a very efficient, very fast operating system, and the Amiga has that and very little overhead too. That's what makes it nice; we don't load down the system running the overhead; we can just process the data."
"Most of our customizing is hardware customizing. The Amiga operating system is flexible enough that we have to drop into assembly only once in a while to initialize some of the special boards we use, but otherwise the operating system is fine; we don't do anything unusual with it. We use it just like it is and build hardware for our interfacing requirements because we have to pull the data out of the data bus in this building, process it, and put the data back in."
[0] http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/amiganasa_en.p...
> Hopkins said the system runs on a radio frequency that sends a signal to school buildings, which reply within a matter of seconds with the status of each building.
I suspect this is what would be difficult to replace. A bespoke wireless sensor monitoring and communications system, integrated into an old heating/cooling system. Modern system just would not integrate into this, without a lot of work. You would have to replace everything, probably including the actual heating/cooling systems themselves.
> I suspect this is what would be difficult to replace. A bespoke wireless sensor monitoring and communications system, integrated into an old heating/cooling system. Modern system just would not integrate into this, without a lot of work. You would have to replace everything, probably including the actual heating/cooling systems themselves.
I wonder if it just integrated into a pre-existing control network:
> The Commodore Amiga was new to GRPS in the early 1980s and it has been working tirelessly ever since. GRPS Maintenance Supervisor Tim Hopkins said that the computer was purchased with money from an energy bond in the 1980s. It replaced a computer that was “about the size of a refrigerator.”
> ...
> A Kentwood High School student programmed it when it was installed in the 1980s. Whenever the district has a problem with it, they go back to the original programmer who still lives in the area.
> ...
> Hopkins said the system runs on a radio frequency that sends a signal to school buildings, which reply within a matter of seconds with the status of each building. The only problem is that the computer operates on the same frequency as some of the walkie-talkies used by the maintenance department.
If programming it was a school project for an 80s kid, might as well try to make its replacement a school project for a 20s kid. If a kid did it back then, the integration can't be that hard.
> If programming it was a school project for an 80s kid, might as well try to make its replacement a school project for a 20s kid. If a kid did it back then, the integration can't be that hard.
You need to find a decision-maker to agree to the liability of letting some kid implement a system today. What if something goes wrong and all the children roast alive or something? Then the parents would sue. It'll never happen today, people are terrified of being wrong so no is always the easiest answer.
Also, yes integration would be hard today. This same pinhead decision maker would require it to run on Windows for "support" and "security".
That 80s Amiga is probably incredibly reliable and robust with its real multi-tasking OS and doesn't require "security patches".
What a shame Commodore dropped the ball on it, it was ahead of its time.
> That 80s Amiga is probably incredibly reliable and robust with its real multi-tasking OS and doesn't require "security patches".
I generally agree with some of your comment, but this sentence confuses me a bit.
I'd argue that the only reason that it does not require security patches is because it's not attached to any network. Though, probably the only actual reason would be that nobody is looking too closely at the whole system, because that wireless communication system is a network. And we really were not good at keeping computers sufficiently secure from any network in the 80s...
(Besides, what does "real" multi-tasking OS mean here? And why is multi-tasking relevant for this job? It seems like in this case a simpler OS would be more reliable and robust, while still being able to perform the job.)
I am sure someone else can explain it better, but basically in the 80s you mostly only had a choice of 8-bit computers (like Apple, C64, etc.), DOS, Macs, Atari ST and Amiga. The 8-bit machines weren't really networking compatible or powerful enough to do more than 1 thing at a time (128k of ram, 1.02 MHz CPU, etc. though I suppose the 16-bit Apple //gs could have been a contender). Macs would have been way too expensive for this purpose. I don't think boards bought Ataris. A DOS PC could have run a multi-threaded program, but if an issue happened then I guess the whole system would go down. So that leaves the Amiga..
The Amiga was the most performant system, its components (i.e. audio, video, etc.) were all able to work independently of the CPU. It also came with 3 networking APIs built-in (one of which was TCP/IP) which probably helped a lot with the coding.
It was also the only machine with a true multi-tasking OS. Everything else was either co-operative or non.
If an issue happened with one piece, it wouldn't have brought down the whole system because everything was able to run independently.
As for security patches, I was expressing a bit of frustration there because I have seen over and over a Windows "security patch" introduce bugs or break functionality. You didn't have that problem back then with the Amiga. It just worked.
I agree the Amiga was a good choice for the time to administer multiple machines.. and it came with decades of support from the original programmer!
> A DOS PC could have run a multi-threaded program, but if an issue happened then I guess the whole system would go down. So that leaves the Amiga.
> It was also the only machine with a true multi-tasking OS. Everything else was either co-operative or non.
> If an issue happened with one piece, it wouldn't have brought down the whole system because everything was able to run independently.
The Amiga was an amazing systems and the best choice they had available to them at the time but...
it's easy to forget it lacked memory protection. That's one of the design decisions that made it run so well on the limited hardware of the time.
It also meant that if one of your multitasking programs went down there was a very high likelihood it would bring the rest of the system down too.
> but basically in the 80s you mostly only had a choice of 8-bit computers
Ah, that was my confusion. I thought we would compare with systems nowadays, to replace the Amiga.
> A DOS PC could have run a multi-threaded program, but if an issue happened then I guess the whole system would go down
Eh, not really. DOS was for almost all intents and purposes as single threaded as the other systems. Segmentation allowed for some sense of relocation, and this was used for TSRs as "background programs", but that's not much of a departure from any of the other systems you mentioned.
> As for security patches, I was expressing a bit of frustration there because I have seen over and over a Windows "security patch" introduce bugs or break functionality. You didn't have that problem back then with the Amiga. It just worked.
Yeah, but that was only because there simply was no untrusted networking. All the other systems fared the same in that regard. And had the Amiga survived, it would need exactly as much security patching as the other systems.
> What if something goes wrong and all the children roast alive or something?
The real risk here seems to be "the HVAC stops working, the person who implemented it is indisposed/gone, and there is no entity to recover money from to get someone else to fix it"
Do you replace your working appliances and vehicles in your home in advance of their failure just in case? Or do you wait, and then spend the money for a repair? Perhaps you could have a backup system in a storage closet?
In the US, school taxes to a school are generally from the local neighbourhood and not the city at large, so advocating for spending to replace something that isn't broken might mean needing to take currently allocated funds from other programs if some contractor says they can only give you a new control system if you agree to let them replace all the boilers as well.
> What if something goes wrong and all the children roast alive or something? Then the parents would sue. It'll never happen today, people are terrified of being wrong so no is always the easiest answer.
I guess I sometimes agree with this sentiment, but this seems like an inappropriate place to invoke it. Is it really so insanely risk averse to get professional HVAC people to install and maintain the HVAC system for a large public facility?
If you mean in the past, this setup was probably state of the art back in the 80s. Multiple buildings networked together? Doubt that there were many HVAC guys setting that up back then.
If you mean today, sure, but why replace something that has worked so reliably without fail?
The number of layers added to modern programming and computer systems has gone up significantly since the 80s. It's sensible to claim that a kid from the 80s had far less to learn to be effective in the world of the 80s, than a 20s kid would need today.
> The number of layers added to modern programming and computer systems has gone up significantly since the 80s. It's sensible to claim that a kid from the 80s had far less to learn to be effective in the world of the 80s, than a 20s kid would need today.
I'm not so sure. There's a huge electronics/hardware hacking scene nowadays fueled by Raspberry Pis and Arduinos. It might actually be easier today for a kid to learn what he needed to know.
I mean, back in the 80s at best the kid probably only had the manual, a couple of programming books, and maybe a magazine subscription for reference.
My guess is kids today can be effective with less knowledge, depending on what one is trying to do. Some prompt engineering, JS, Python, etc can accomplish a lot.
JS is appearing everywhere, and Python isn't far behind. Both seem approachable for modest projects. Basic had its charms, yet also becomes difficult to maintain as it grows -- not unlike many modern stacks. I suppose the primary difference is the stack is deeper, with many more layers.
I recall a friend going deep with Basic in the 90s while I was more pragmatic. I only knew Batch scripting, Kilk n Play, and various other scripting and gaming tools. Yet I had already made several prototype games, more functionality, 3D models and character animations, and even learned some BBcode and HTML to help mod a gaming forum. He had ... some very unimpressive screen drawing demos.
>Some prompt engineering, JS, Python, etc can accomplish a lot.
The problem is you can’t just deploy this and forget it without regular security updates (with the likelihood of breakage in compatibility - python libs are particularly bad with this)
That said, the original radio based system is probably extremely easy to mess with if you have a basic SDR. It’s just that no one bothered so far.
The Amiga programmer didn't have Google and stack overflow, they likely were more proficient than most modern devs even as a teenager based on my experience as a kid who read the Amiga rom kernel manuals cover to cover.
As 80's coding kid, I am quite confident that kids would be able to master coding Arduinos, ESP32, BBC Micro and Raspberry PIs.
As to be effective in today's world, already knowing that is more than many teenagers know beyond doing likes in social media.
Ok, but as far as the users are concerned, do the layers add much value to this use-case?
Likely no, but a kid isn't going to be learning low level systems programming in highschool. Their entry point into the world is programming is going to be high-level, as that has less barrier to entry.
My point is that kids in the 80s interested in computers likely had the skillset to do this job. Kids interested in programming today, they are more likely to be qualified to make the school a website, not program its heating system. I don't doubt some would be able to do it, but the field has grown so much that beginners necessarily must focus on specific areas, and I bet that is not often low level enough to do this job.
but a kid isn't going to be learning low level systems programming in highschool
There are still plenty doing that; often getting their first exposure via the cracking scene.
>the computer operates on the same frequency as some of the walkie-talkies used by the maintenance department.
>project for a 20s kid.
I'm honestly surprised that the system hasn't been commandeered by some other enterprising student with some cheap boafang from amazon just trying to trigger with key presses.
> You would have to replace everything, probably including the actual heating/cooling systems themselves.
You wouldn’t need to replace the actual boilers/chillers/air handlers/terminal units, just the temperature controls/control wiring/control relays/control computer. There is mechanical equipment out there that is still controlled by pneumatic controls and that equipment can be retrofit to use digital controls.
Replacing the mechanical units may be beneficial, condensing boilers are extremely efficient and so are newer chillers/etc.
> A bespoke wireless sensor monitoring and communications system, integrated into an old heating/cooling system
Ofc I'm just speculating here, but based on the article's description I suspect this whole wireless integration could be stripped. Maybe in the 80s they saw the need for a central computer running all the logic, but I suspect that nowadays this computer could be replaced with programmable controllers, one at each building. Industrial controllers are very reliable and there are available professionals for support.
That's exactly it.. i work at hospital system and just had to deal with this myself. The HVAC guys were in to upgrade the controllers for the air handling systems. They are basically PLCs that connect to a server like anything else. The issue is interfacing with the system. These pre 2000s air handler units generally communicate with the controller over serial, and there are specific configurations to make it work. We almost had a very costly issue of needing to upgrade the controls in the one system but they ended up getting it going.
>I suspect this is what would be difficult to replace.
Nah, anything driven by relays and or pneumatic controls can be replaced with modern, low cost PLC hardware. It is common for old chemical plants to have their control systems replaced while still operating. Control is handed over from the old system to the new system (hot cutover) one control loop at a time. All you need is adequate planning.
You have no clue what you're talking about. You are correct in that low cost PLC hardware can replace relay and pneumatic controls, but HVAC systems aren't just basic relays and pneumatics. They are microcomputers that communicate with actual protocols. They is no hot cutover or simple handover like you say.
Source: I literally just lead a project to upgrade the PLC controls on a few air handler units and build entire server and network infrastructure. We had to run Ethernet to each of these from the network closets because they previously had went to a Windows XP box in the maintenance guys office. There were many challenges, one being getting the configuration off a couple of the old PLCs to make the new ones even talk to them.
Easy, tiger. I was talking about upgrading controls on old equipment, not new equipment.
>but HVAC systems aren't just basic relays and pneumatics.
Old ones are.
Feel free to withdraw your overly aggressive comment any time you'd like.
> You have no clue what you're talking about. You are correct in that low cost PLC hardware can replace relay and pneumatic controls, but HVAC systems aren't just basic relays and pneumatics.
The person you’re replying to was saying that the old method of HVAC/process control, prior to digital controls, was pneumatics and relays. Old HVAC control systems were indeed pneumatic systems, I’ve seen some in the wild in the last few years in the US.
I thought it was replaced. The developer posted on discus, but I found the comment on slashdot quoted.
https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7543887&cid=499003...
>> When the Amiga system originally went in it was controlling well over 100 buildings throughout the district, including the entire GRCC campus at the time. The Amiga replaced the head-end of the system, which was experiencing expensive hardware failures every year ... and you couldn't get parts for that mini-computer on e-bay. It is essentially acting as a huge database (schedules, configurations, control programs, history, etc.), system manager, and monitoring system ("head-end") for the remaining 19 buildings HVAC systems. If the Amiga goes down, the buildings will continue to operate using the configurations last received, with most of the individual device controls being able to be manually overridden inside each building, albeit with less energy efficiency. What you will loose is the ability to change schedules/custom control code/configurations and the ability to centrally monitor the performance of the buildings.
>> Each building has one or more local control systems, and those systems communicate back to the central head-end over radio-modem (there was no district-wide network back then). Schedule and other control changes are sent to the buildings and alerts/reports are sent back. That old equipment in the buildings, even older than the Amiga, is what dictates the radio communications link. They incorporate specific protocols for keying up the radio that are not directly compatible with a newer serial to Ethernet type device that would seem like a logical replacement.
>> The control systems themselves gather temperatures, both inside and outside the building, look at trends and do predictive control of the equipment to accomodate scheduled use of various areas of each building. For the day, this was very advanced building control and offered significant energy savings, as well as comfort in the buildings.
>> Over time, as buildings have been updated, sold or replaced, the local controls withing those buildings have been replaced with newer/more modern controls that communicate with newer central control systems. Replacing these controls that are local to the buildings is what is responsible for the majority of the cost I would say.
>> As far as the Amiga system itself, I believe most of the components are still the original. The hard drive may have failed twice over the years, requiring a rebuild from backups. They did pick up or have donated a few Amiga systems to use as parts as needed, but the system has proven to be very resilient. Obviously, Monitors, Keyboards and Mice can only take so much use without needing to be replaced. Without this, the system likely would have become inoperable and unservicable many years ago, or been incredibly expensive to keep running.
>> From a technical stand point, the Amiga was selected because at the time it was the only "Personal Computer" (PC) that had a true pre-emptive multi-taskng operating system. It needed to be able to handle multiple processes simultaneously, including interfacing with the systems, maintaining settings in the database, monitoring the system as well as support for both local and remote access to the system simultaneously. Basically, its capabilities fit the need. While for nostalgia reasons I would hate to see it go, it has been 30 years and I think the system has done its job. Replacing a building's control system doesn't happen overnight, and when you are talking 19 buildings with ancient (yes I am calling myself ancient I guess) control systems, it is going to take money and time. The payback in energy savings, comfort and safe control of the buildings though I think justifies the cost.
> It needed to be able to handle multiple processes simultaneously, including interfacing with the systems, maintaining settings in the database, monitoring the system as well as support for both local and remote access to the system simultaneously. Basically, its capabilities fit the need.
Ha, bullshit. Someone decided they liked the Amiga and wanted to play with it. I am sympathetic!
no that's actually true. in the mid 80s, it was the only personal computer that actually had preemptive multitasking built into the operating system.
serial communications were interrupt driven which didn't lend itself well at all to cooperative multitasking schemes. (gotta service those buffers asap)
Maybe replace it with LoRa... but what device is in each building? I doubt you have to update the heating/cooling systems, they are likely just relay closures.
Also each school is probably on the net these days, so replace with some Wifi IOT device.
Or Samsung "Smart Things".. but unlikely to last 30 years..
>they are likely just relay closures.
You get it, yup.
>Also each school is probably on the net these days, so replace with some Wifi IOT device.
What I use are Ethernet to Bacnet gateways. Each building gets a gateway device with Bacnet nodes connected over a serial daisy chain. If the HVAC device isn't networkable, serial devices do the relay flipping. IT folks get the data into different applications.
Integration and maintenance are expensive.
Schools are often very challenging RF environments, my uni wifi was constantly overloaded as fuck, even the newly built engineering campus was not great. And they ran a decent amount of APs, but there was also a fuckload of people there on wifi all the time, because lol engineering campus.
Assumptions about IoT availability in terms of bluetooth/BTLE or 2.4/5GHz might be challenging for sure. Especially inside whatever HVAC metal/concrete cage etc (just run ethernet). Still though I mean it's running on a legacy UHF (?) system right now.
There are some industrial ISM bands at like 900 MHz or 432 MHz or something, and you can get modem boards that run on that. The 432 MHz aren't too fast but you just need to send "thermostat X turn on" and get a confirmation back. Which probably should be signed commands so some some yahoo can't have fun with the thermostat, even on this system, hopefully. But still, in a lot of cases probably a commodity solution would work.
> Or Samsung "Smart Things".. but unlikely to last 30 years..
Is there anything that actually works with it directly? I have a growing number of connected devices around me, and none of them can talk to SmartThings, except floor heating controllers that do so by half-broken integration with Tuya...
Trying to figure out (without success) how to hook A/C units to SmartThings, I learned that apparently Samsung/ST is abandoning their existing "we'll figure it out for you in the cloud somehow" architecture, moving towards "please buy our hub/edge device, and run some Lua scripts on it" architecture, which actually doesn't feel like an upgrade.
Well that's what I figure: you buy their thermostat. We don't use ours for hvac control, just water leak monitoring.
Can you imagine what Samsung (or any large corporation) would want for a centralized controller for an entire school district?
What makes you say that? A software defined radio could do this pretty easily.
It's pretty much guaranteed that any software defined radio you build today will be almost impossible to get parts for in 10 years, so your maintenance budget ends up requiring a software developer to upgrade things when parts become obsolete. At least with computers from the 1980s, the hardware is fully understood and can be much more easily repaired. There are already projects that have produced modern replacements for custom chips in machines like the Commodore 64, and there is at least 1 underway for the Amiga's chipset.
At that point keep everything else intact and just replace the Amiga there with a Mr. FPGA running the same thing on hardware emulation.
Reminds me of: "We do these things not because they are easy but because we thought they would be easy."
I don't believe one that transmits is anywhere near as cheap as one that recieves.
Related: Palm Pilot helps run the IMAX projector
https://www.theverge.com/23801118/imax-movie-palm-pilot-oppe...
Back when I studied EE, one of our class projects (industrial automation) involved working with companies out in the industry. We found a local heating companies that provided district heating, and they had this ancient PLC running some pretty central parts of the operation. By ancient, I mean early 70s or so. But the thing had just been running for forever, doing its thing.
No documentation, of course, so a metric ton of black-box testing to find out what did what.
In the end we managed to design a pretty nice interface/HMI, and a API so that it could be monitored online.
Archive link for people outside of the US: https://archive.li/1gGb7
I wonder if they received the funding for replacing it?
Why replace what's not broken? Amortization of costs is one possibility. The replacement parts must be hard to obtain, but are they spending over 50k/y on old amiga parts? If not, why do you think maintenance of the old system would cost more than the new system? (+ ongoing yearly fees/maintenance)
Just receiving a funding doesn't imply the need to burn the money.
Any replacement using wifi +- cellular and some javascript pile of dependencies is likely to work less reliably: for any budget of b=1 million it'll cost a multiple x>1 of that.
Why replace? So you don't have downtime. If it breaks now, everything may be off until they replace the system. That could be months of no classes, which would be much worse than spending money to replace.
If you start now, and finish before it breaks, you don't have to have downtime.
Why not replace? So you don't have downtime. If it breaks now, the system is well known (30+ years) and maintained. If it's updated to something new, everything may be off until they bring back the old system.That could be months of no classes, which would be much worse than spending money to replace.
If they do nothing now, instead of taking a bet the new system will be more stable than the old one (a bet against the 30+ years odd) you don't have to have downtime.
> is well known
No... It's known by the guy who wrote it 40 years ago that happens to still live there and want to chip in to fix it
> maintained
Well, they said parts are difficult to find now. I would not consider something with no replacement parts well maintained
> taking a bet the new system will be more stable than the old one
What? It's a gamble to leave it as it is with a bus factor of 1 and rickety old computer parts. Setting up a replacement doesn't imply this one goes away. If the new one is worse, they can have a plan to switch back to the old. If this computer catches on fire, they have to pray they can find a working replacement that the original implementor can install.
> It's known by the guy who wrote it 40 years ago that happens to still live there and want to chip in to fix it
So yes, it's well know by this person and his company. I'd be surprised if in 30 years he didn't document the system and teach it to his employees.
> Setting up a replacement doesn't imply this one goes away.
Agreed, it generally implies a replacement project that goes on for years before being declared a failure at taxpayer expense.
> Well, they said parts are difficult to find now. I would not consider something with no replacement parts well maintained
The parts are "difficult" to find, yes. So if you say there are "no replacement parts", you are moving the goalpost from "possible" to "impossible" to obtain, while they are available for money on ebay. A few thousands will get you many vintage computer parts!
BTW spares for the new system will also be necessary, if you plan to have it work for another 30 years. They may be more expansive.
> It's a gamble to leave it as it is with a bus factor of 1 and rickety old computer parts
We do not know how many employees he has, and whether the replacement parts are "rickety and old". If you are used to maintaining vintage system off ebay parts, you will see lots of perfects parts available for about everything.
> If this computer catches on fire, they have to pray they can find a working replacement that the original implementor can install.
They say they have 3 spares, so no prayer required. Documentation and backups are likely available.
I just don't understand how so many people are afraid of the existing and want to rewrite everything from scratch. Looks like Resume-Driver Development to me: good for the developer and manager, bad for the company and its clients.
You could retrofit a more modern computer in there. Probably even reverse engineer the radio system and replace it.
This would have been done by an enthusiastic high school student with both programming, electronics, maybe some RF knowledge too. Radio amateur? I find these stories kind of sad. Clever system built by someone talented, at a low cost -- replacement with a modern system costed in the millions. Those talented people still exist but they wouldn't get a look in with most RFPs.
Here is Melbourne, Australia our train system used to run on I believe a PDP based system established in 1982 until the mid 2000's when they started a transition to an all new system simply because the hardware was getting too old to maintain.
The intermediate step was to emulate the old systems software on Windows XP machines until all the other signal systems could be upgraded.
https://web.archive.org/web/20201112040545/https://www.smh.c...
Yea, schools today don't encourage kids to screw around with computers.
Sure but what happens when the student who figured it all out graduates?
Ask a GNURadio hacker and it can debug the issue in minutes.
> A Kentwood High School student programmed it when it was installed in the 1980s.
Impressive!
> Whenever the district has a problem with it, they go back to the original programmer who still lives in the area.
It is indeed impressive, but I hope there's a contract for this. Everything else about this story sounds insanely incompetent, so I... I worry.
In principle there's nothing wrong with a Motorola 68K running a system like this, but the rest of this is damned.
You'd probably be horrified to know what kind of systems still run most of the world's manufacturing, very much including modern chip fabs.
Ladder logic, written by peasants. (signed: control peasant that prefers ST)
Lucky you, my stakeholders would run screaming for the hills whenever they caught a whiff of written code on PLCs. All ladder, all the time.
A fart has been lofted in your direction
Would I? The amiga setup sounds totally fine to me. Aside from old HVAC equipment potentially wasting a lot of energy, I see nothing wrong with using a 40 year old computer to control everything.
Slight nitpick: the Amiga was released in 1985, so the system dates at least from 1986. Other sources say 1987, which is not the "early 1980s" as the article says.
However, it's still cool that it's running. I love seeing old tech that's still just running. In the early 2000s, one of my clients was running a woodcutting system off a ZX Spectrum. They wanted to replace it, but the cost to rewrite their custom software would have been so much that they ended up buying a few used Spectrums as backup.
I wonder what became of that. Of course, fast forward to now and they could migrate to ZX Nexts. :-)
Yes, me too. I'm no longer in that geographic area (or area of the industry, for that matter), so I don't know.
However, I am anxiously awaiting my Spectrum Next...it seems to be inching towards a delivery date.
I liked my first Next so much I ordered in the second Kickstarter too, so now I'm waiting for my next Next.
Geoblocked: Content not visible outside the US :(
How is this still a thing? Absolutely nuts. What happened to the www.
GDPR, cookie popup requirements
* article referenced on the $175m bond: https://web.archive.org/web/20150312145702/http://woodtv.com...
The 2015 bonds were approved: https://grps.org/reimagine/
Here are the GRPS munis, issued in early 2016 totaling about 134m: https://emma.msrb.org/IssueView/Details/ES360882
Unfortunately, no luck finding any interesting tidbits on this Commodore or whether it was replaced. Maybe theres an RFP out there?
It could probably be replaced by a Raspberry Pi with an Amiga emulator.
I love Amiga
> A new, more current system would cost between $1.5 and 2 million.
Man, I'll build it for $750k - will buy a few Raspberry Pis and we're good to go...
Hell, I'll do it for half a million and upgrade them to a 486.
Title should include (2015) or (2018)
I wonder if they're still running it eight years later and after Covid.
Yes. It made the news again because of the unseasonable heat up here earlier this summer.
This just shows that we need a sustainable widely supported hardware platform for long-time operation. 30 years is not that long. I wonder if RISC-V could take this niche.
I think I picked up a bootleg of this at a car boot sale in the early 2000s. Couldn't get it to work with my EU boiler, but it had a great cracktro.
"This content is not available in your country/region." (UK)
>This content is not available in your country/region.
Keep it classy, America.
Agreed it doesn't look great. But to be fair, it's probably GDPR cookie regulations that drove them to it.
JayMiner.beginSpinning();
Translation: "This post on a Venture Capital website implies that the legacy of Jay Miner's greatest engineering accomplishment is running a Michigan school's heating and air conditioning system, making Jay spin(); in his grave."
Moreover, this story is very old, is probably no longer true, but continues to resurface from time to time.
I think a novel benefit of open source is that it shields engineers from the often fatal consequences of being on the wrong side of a billionaire. As a consequence, there are now a couple of generations of engineers who can't relate to what life in their occupation was like before the open source movement went mainstream.
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/15ni8gu/til_...
this is happening more and more that I see something in my reddit RSS feed first, then hours later it pops up on HN
Another example from today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37078047
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/15ncz6j/til_...
Similarly, I'm excited that I am frequently seeing this kind of article in my Mastodon feed first and then seeing it showing up in HN.
Your point being? "reddit got it faster"? No pun intended, I would like to understand your reasoning.