Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!rice!titan!phil From: phil@titan.rice.edu (William LeFebvre) Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle Subject: Re: Old fashioned control room Message-ID: <3043@kalliope.rice.edu> Date: 6 Apr 89 21:16:13 GMT References: <2108@botter.cs.vu.nl> <23407@ames.arc.nasa.gov> Sender: usenet@rice.edu Reply-To: phil@Rice.edu (William LeFebvre) Organization: Rice University, Houston Lines: 28 In article <23407@ames.arc.nasa.gov> mike@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Mike Smithwick) writes: >There is an apparent upgrade in progress. Take a look at the MOCR >pictures on the next mission and you'll notice a number of >SUN workstations starting to creep into the room. No, sorry. They're Masscomp workstations. >Speaking of the old system, I have a training manual for console >operators. It is crude beyond belief, even MS-DOS would be an improvment. >I don't have it with me, but I recall that the users had to expressly >input bitmasks to select which data screen they wanted to see. Yeah, it really isn't so much a computer with an operating system as it is a collection of black and white televisions that act as CRT display terminals (no graphics---strictly rows and columns, no keyboards either). You have to enter a "channel number" to get the right display. Want to know how they get lines and other graphics stuff on the displays? Oh it's so gross and disgusting. I'll give you a hint: any graphics that get displayed on the tubes will never change unless the channel is changed. Only the letters and numbers are dynamic. Then I'll tell you how the big map works. It's pretty disgusting, too. William LeFebvre Department of Computer Science Rice University