geek code: n.
(also “Code of the Geeks”). A set of codes commonly used in sig blocks to broadcast the interests, skills, and aspirations of the poster. Features a G at the left margin followed by numerous letter codes, often suffixed with plusses or minuses. Because many net users are involved in computer science, the most common prefix is ‘GCS’. To see a copy of the current code, browse

Code: Select all

http://www.geekcode.com/

. Here is a sample geek code (that of Robert Hayden, the code's inventor) from that page:


-----BEGIN�GEEK�CODE�BLOCK-----
Version:�3.1
GED/J�d--�s:++>:�a-�C++(++++)$�ULUO++�P+>+++�L++�!E----�W+(---)�N+++
o+�K+++�w+(---)�O-�M+$>++�V--�PS++(+++)>$�PE++(+)>$�Y++�PGP++�t-�5+++
X++�R+++>$�tv+�b+�DI+++�D+++�G+++++>$�e++$>++++�h�r--�y+**
------END�GEEK�CODE�BLOCK------


The geek code originated in 1993; it was inspired (according to the inventor) by previous “bear”, “smurf” and “twink” style-and-sexual-preference codes from lesbian and gay newsgroups. It has in turn spawned imitators; there is now even a “Saturn geek code” for owners of the Saturn car.

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Welcome to:
THE GEEK CODE


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THE STATUS OF THE GEEK CODE:

The Geek Code is basicly a (small) part of Internet history. When I did the first incarnation of the code back in '93, it was as a lark. Eventually, it evolved into the form you see online now and has remained virtually unchanged since that time.

I've always meant to, and still hope to, someday get back to the code and release a new version for the new century that was more modern and hip and all that. Several things happened. First, the internet of 1996 was still a wild untamed virgin paradise of geeks and eggheads unpopulated by script kiddies, and the denizens of AOL. When things changed, I seriously lost my way. I mean, all the "geek" that was the Internet was gone and replaced by Xfiles buzzwords and politicians passing laws about a technology they refused to comprehend. Think about it, this was the infancy of even the world wide web, when having a "DotCom" address wasn't hip (and wasn't a billion-dollar snowjob by the ICANN).

Still, I always said to myself "Self, some day you'll get over it and write the new code."

AND SOME DAY I WILL!

However, until that time does arrive, The Geek Code stands as it does now, still in the pure and pristine form it was intended. A testament to the history of the Internet, however small a part it may have played.

Sincerely,

Robert Hayden
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Last updated: March 5, 1996
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So you think you are a geek, eh? The first step is to admit to yourself your geekiness. No matter what anyone says, geeks are people too; geeks have rights. So take a deep breath and announce to the world that you are a geek. Your courage will give you strength that will last you forever.
How to tell the world you are a geek, you ask? Use the universal Geek code! Using this special code will allow you to let other un-closeted geeks know who you are in a simple, codified statement.

The single best way to announce your geekhood is to add your geek code to your signature file or plan and announce it far and wide. But be careful, you may give other geeks the courage to come out of the closet. You might want to hang on to your copy of the code in order to help them along.


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A NOTE OR TWO FROM THE AUTHOR
Well, here it is, finally, version 3.x of the World-Famous Geek Code. Yes, it's taken me much longer to write the new version than it should have. Yes, the old version was hopelessly out of date. I apologize. A combination of too much schooling followed by college graduation delayed it. In addition, there were almost 2,000 suggestions and comments on version 2.1 to wade through for consideration in this version. However, I'm a grad student now (Education Technology, Mankato State University), so I have a lot of time on my hands (yeah, right!).
It is my hope that this new version will be much superior to version 2.x. One of the main problems with 2.x was not that it was too long (well, it is too long, but that's irrelevant), but much of its length was attributed to non-geek categories (such as 'barney'). One of the goals of 3.x is to eliminate many of the non-geeky and unimportant categories in order to make room for geeky traits. "More geek, less bullshit" is a good motto. In addition, many of the categories (such as politics) were very poorly developed. These categories have been revamped and expanded to make them more fully cover all the requisite areas.

Finally, despite my opinions to the contrary, I've left some of the "appearance" sections in. I'd like to think of looks as being not a very geeky trait, but it seems that many of the users of the code use it as a litmus test for dating or something. Thus, a geek code has become a replacement for the classic "what do you look like" that once permeated the net. I've eliminated most of the categories, but left the most important ones in. Hey, anything for my fellow geeks...

In other news, the Geek Code is starting to go mainstream. It appeared with commentary in the February '95 issue of Boardwatch magazine as well as the August 1995 issue of Fast Forward, a suplement to The Washington Post. I've also received permission requests from people that want to translate the code into other languages; so far Japanese, Russian, French and ADA (ewww!). It's my hope that perhaps this next year can bring a little more popular media exposure and a true world presence. If you want to write something about the Geek Code, or do a translation, or anything else, please read the copyright notice at the end. It's fairly open, but you don't want to get in trouble, do you? If you do write an article or something about the Geek Code, I would like to have a copy if it for my own records.


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Instructions

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The geek code consists of several categories. Each category is labeled with a letter and some qualifiers. Go through each category and determine which set of qualifiers best describes you in that category. By stringing all of these 'codes' together, you are able to construct your overall geek code. It is this single line of code that will inform other geeks the world over of what a great geek you actually are.
Some of the qualifiers will very probably not match with you exactly. It is impossible to cover all possibilities in each category. Simply choose that qualifier that most closely matches you. Also, some activities described in a specific qualifier you may not engage in, while you do engage in others. Each description of each qualifier describes the wide range of activities that apply, so as long as you match with one, you can probably use that qualifier.

After you have determined each of your qualifiers, you need to the construct your GEEK CODE BLOCK. Instructions are provided on how to do this towards the end of this file.

Also, pay particular attention to case-sensitivity, there can be a big difference between a 'w' and a 'W'.

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My standing in the world of geeks:

Age : !a

Shape : s:

Computers : C+

Dress : d-- on occasion : !d

And now to poke fun at those Windows users :

Microsoft Windows
A good many geeks suffer through the use of various versions of Microsoft's Windows running on or as a replacement for DOS. Rate your Windows Geekiness.

w+++++

w++++

w+++

w++

w+

w

w-

w--

w---

Source :

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http://www.geekcode.com/geek.html

Edmund Berkeley first described Simon in his 1949 book, "Giant Brains, or Machines That Think" and went on to publish plans to build Simon in a series of Radio Electronics issues in 1950 and 1951.
Simon touched such pioneering computer scientists as Ivan Sutherland, who went on to influence development of interactive graphical personal computers.


By 1959, over 400 Simon plans were sold.

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Public Information Office
Columbia University May 18, 1950



Fact Sheet on "Simon"




What is "Simon"? A very simple model, mechanical brain -- the smallest complete mechanical brain in existence. The machine was conceived by Edmund C. Berkeley, president of E.C. Berkeley and Associates actuarial consultants (of 60 State Street, Boston, and 36 West 11th Street, New York). Mr. Berkeley described the machine, before he had it built, in his book, "Giant Brains, or Machines That Think," which was published last November. In the book, he wrote:



"We shall now consider how we can design a very simple machine that will think.. Let us call it Simon, because of its predecessor, Simple Simon... Simon is so simple and so small in fact that it could be built to fill up less space than a grocery-store box; about four cubic feet....It may seem that a simple model of a mechanical brain like Simon is of no great practical use. On the contrary, Simon has the same use in instruction as a set of simple chemical experiments has: to stimulate thinking and understanding, and to produce training and skill. A training course on mechanical brains could very well include the construction of a simple model mechanical brain, as an exercise.




Who built "Simon"? The machine represents the combined efforts of a skilled mechanic, William A. Porter, of West Medford, Mass., and two Columbia University graduate students of electrical engineering, Robert A. Jensen (of 76-19 175th Street Flushing, L.I., N.Y.) and Andrew Vall (of 4237 Judge Street, Elmhurst, L.I.,N.Y.). Porter did the basic construction, while Jensen and Vall took the machine when it was still not in working order and engineered it so that it functioned. Specifically, they

designed a switching system that made possible
the follow-through of a given problem;

set up an automatic synchronizing system;

installed a system for indicated errors due
to loss of synchronization;

re-designed completely the power supply of the
machine.

In their own words, the two students simply put to work their knowledge of electrical engineering, after mastering the mass of intricate detail with which they were presented last March, when Mr. Berkeley brought "Simon" to Columbia.



Capsule biographies: Vall, 23, received his bachelor's degree from Columbia's school of Engineering in 1949, and is working for his master's degree in electrical engineering. In June, he will join Bell Telephone Laboratories to do electronic development work. He is an Army veteran. Jensen, 25, holds a bachelor's degree from City College (1949) and is now working for his master s degree. He hopes to do development work in the computer or switching field. He is a veteran of three-and-a-half years with the Army Air Forces.




What operations does "Simon" perform? Addition, negation, greater than, and selection.




What did "Simon" Cost? About $600. The time and effort of the two Columbia students was contributed.




What makes "Simon" unique? According to Mr. Berkeley, the machine has established at least half a dozen world's records.

- It is the smallest complete mechanical brain in existence.

- It knows not more than four numbers; it can express only the number 0, 1, 2 and 3.

- It is "guaranteed to make every member of an audience feel superior to it."

- It is a mechanical brain that has cost less than $1,000.

- It can be carried around in one hand (and the power supply in the other hand).

- It can be completely understood by one man.

- It is an excellent device for teaching, lecturing and explaining.

What is the machine's future? Mr. Berkeley's answer follows:


"Simon has two futures. In first place Simon can grow. With another chassis and some wiring and engineering, the machine will be able to compute decimally, Perhaps in six months more, we may be able to have it working on real problems. In the second place, Simon may start a fad of building baby mechanical brains, similar to the hobby of building crystal radio sets that swept the country in the 1920's."



* * *
Source :

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http://www.blinkenlights.com

The HP-01 wrist instrument looked like a digital watch but was smarter than many pocket calculators. It performed more than three dozen functions to manipulate and interrelate time, calendar and numeric data. With six interactive functions (time, alarm, timer/stopwatch, date/calendar, calculator and memory) the HP-01 had 28 tiny keys that the user operated with a stylus built into the bracelet.

The HP-01, code-named "Cricket," was not a successful product for HP. It was too bulky and heavy, and HP sold it though upscale jewelry stores. But miniaturizing the math functions was quite an engineering feat, and when HP discontinued manufacturing the HP-01, its inner workings were destroyed so no one would copy the extraordinarily small package engineering. The HP Archives has a few of the remaining elements.

The HP-01 currently is one of the most sought after collectibles in the antique electronics market, often fetching two or three times its original price ($650 for the silver color, $750 for the gold version).


Additional information:



•Read the Hewlett-Packard Journal's December 1977 article, http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/museum/personalsystems/0022/index.html
(PDF, 3.1MB)

Also of interest a small pictorial tour of some products, 1968 - 2000

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/museum/personalsystems/index.html

On the last day of his mission in Afghanistan, on his way to a firefight, Lieutenant Sam Brown, in his Humvee, hit an improvised exploseive device. The result being, Brown, having 30% of his body being covered with third degree burns. His injuries so severe, he was kept in a medically induced coma for the first few weeks.


Brown endured more than two dozen surgeries. The most excrciating pain came from daily wound care and physical therapy. The pain so unbearable, his superior officers would have to order him to undergo treatment.

Brown was concerned about becoming dependant on the addictive painkilling narcotics given him. His doctor suggested a video game to relieve the pain.

Video Game ? --- Pain Relief ? --- Silly ? --- Not so farfetched !

SnowWorld is a ground breaking experiment in virtual reality. In SnowWorld, Brown could concentrate on throwing snowballs at penguins and mastodons to the music of Paul Simon, instead of focusing on the painful wound care happening at the same time.

SnowWorld uses the age old trick of distraction.

For Sam Brown, SnowWorld was a Godsend. For the first time since his accident, he felt relief from pain, without drugs.


The definitive magic of video gaming, we all knew it was there.

Source : Meghan Frank and Neal Carter

[url]http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/24/14648057-groundbreaking-experiment-in-virtual-reality-uses-video-game-to-treat-pain#__utma=238145375.1560629308.1351088170.1351091958.1351175730.3&__utmb=238145375.3.9.1351175823703&__utmc=238145375&__utmx=-&__utmz=238145375.1351175730.3.3.utmcsr=bing|utmccn=(organic)|utmcmd=organic|utmctr=Rock%20Center|utmcct=/&__utmv=238145375.|8=Earned%20By=msnbc%7Cnightly%20news%7Crockcenter=1^12=Landing%20Content=Original=1^13=Landing%20Hostname=rockcenter.nbcnews.com=1^30=Visit%20Type%20to%20Content=Internal%20to%20Original=1&__utmk=101394754[/url]

SnowWorld Video :

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http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rock-center/49507067

When I was at school (many years ago), one series of games really captured what PC gaming was all about. The Wing Commander series was unique, original, different and I became hooked from the start. I followed the games right from the first floppy disk version and played them all to completion right up to the final game 'Privateer 2' in 1996. There were attempts to release further games, 'Privateer 3', 'Wing Commander VII' but alas it was not to be. I am also not ashamed to say that I even watched the movie based on the games but the less said about that the better.



Today (10-10-2012) the creator of the series, Chris Roberts unveils his plans for the next game in the series. Star Citizen is his grandest plan to date and if the visuals are anything to go by it is not going to disappoint. Here are a few pictures to get your juices flowing,





I am also currently an avid EVE player and have been for over seven years but somehow EVE never delivered in terms of story or history. Technically it is brilliant and one of the most complex and involving MMORPG games available. Still it does not deliver in terms of action in the same way that the Wing Commander games did all those years ago.



There is just one small problem. No one will back and space game, not to mention a space game on the PC. This is where you come in. Go to his site and make a pledge from as little as $10 (or as much as $10,000, as Clint in Jaws said, '$10,000 for me by myself. For that you get the head, the tail, the whole damn thing' ). Then you will have shown your interest and also provided the team at Star Citizen with confidence to continue their mission, to make the best dam space game ever.



I will see you all ingame hopefully some time very soon. Now go and sign up

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http://robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen/

An excerpt from "Secrets of the Little Blue Box" by Ron Rosenbaum, printed in the October 1971 issue of Esquire Magazine.


A Phone Phreak Call Takes Care of Business

The next morning I attend a gathering of four phone phreaks in ----- (a California suburb). The gathering takes place in a comfortable split-level home in an upper-middle-class subdivision. Heaped on the kitchen table are the portable cassette recorders, M-F cassettes, phone patches, and line ties of the four phone phreaks present. On the kitchen counter next to the telephone is a shoe-box-size blue box with thirteen large toggle switches for the tones. The parents of the host phone phreak, Ralph, who is blind, stay in the living room with their sighted children. They are not sure exactly what Ralph and his friends do with the phone or if it's strictly legal, but he is blind and they are pleased he has a hobby which keeps him busy.

The group has been working at reestablishing the historic "2111" conference, reopening some toll-free loops, and trying to discover the dimensions of what seem to be new initiatives against phone phreaks by phone-company security agents.

It is not long before I get a chance to see, to hear, Randy at work. Randy is known among the phone phreaks as perhaps the finest con man in the game. Randy is blind. He is pale, soft and pear-shaped, he wears baggy pants and a wrinkly nylon white sport shirt, pushes his head forward from hunched shoulders somewhat like a turtle inching out of its shell. His eyes wander, crossing and recrossing, and his forehead is somewhat pimply. He is only sixteen years old.

But when Randy starts speaking into a telephone mouthpiece his voice becomes so stunningly authoritative it is necessary to look again to convince yourself it comes from a chubby adolescent Randy. Imagine the voice of a crack oil-rig foreman, a tough, sharp, weather-beaten Marlboro man of forty. Imagine the voice of a brilliant performance-fund gunslinger explaining how he beats the Dow Jones by thirty percent. Then imagine a voice that could make those two sound like Stepin Fetchit. That is sixteen-year-old Randy's voice.

He is speaking to a switchman in Detroit. The phone company in Detroit had closed up two toll-free loop pairs for no apparent reason, although heavy use by phone phreaks all over the country may have been detected. Randy is telling the switchman how to open up the loop and make it free again:

"How are you, buddy. Yeah. I'm on the board in here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and we've been trying to run some tests on your loop-arounds and we find'em busied out on both sides.... Yeah, we've been getting a 'BY' on them, what d'ya say, can you drop cards on 'em? Do you have 08 on your number group? Oh that's okay, we've had this trouble before, we may have to go after the circuit. Here lemme give 'em to you: your frame is 05, vertical group 03, horizontal 5, vertical file 3. Yeah, we'll hang on here.... Okay, found it? Good. Right, yeah, we'd like to clear that busy out. Right. All you have to do is look for your key on the mounting plate, it's in your miscellaneous trunk frame. Okay? Right. Now pull your key from NOR over the LCT. Yeah. I don't know why that happened, but we've been having trouble with that one. Okay. Thanks a lot fella. Be seein' ya."

Randy hangs up, reports that the switchman was a little inexperienced with the loop-around circuits on the miscellaneous trunk frame, but that the loop has been returned to its free-call status.

Delighted, phone phreak Ed returns the pair of numbers to the active-status column in his directory. Ed is a superb and painstaking researcher. With almost Talmudic thoroughness he will trace tendrils of hints through soft-wired mazes of intervening phone-company circuitry back through complex linkages of switching relays to find the location and identity of just one toll-free loop. He spends hours and hours, every day, doing this sort of thing. He has somehow compiled a directory of eight hundred "Band-six in-WATS numbers" located in over forty states. Band-six in-WATS numbers are the big 800 numbers -- the ones that can be dialed into free from anywhere in the country.

Ed the researcher, a nineteen-year-old engineering student, is also a superb technician. He put together his own working blue box from scratch at age seventeen. (He is sighted.) This evening after distributing the latest issue of his in-WATS directory (which has been typed into Braille for the blind phone phreaks), he announces he has made a major new breakthrough:

"I finally tested it and it works, perfectly. I've got this switching matrix which converts any touch-tone phone into an M-F-er."

The tones you hear in touch-tone phones are not the M-F tones that operate the long-distance switching system. Phone phreaks believe A.T.&T. had deliberately equipped touch tones with a different set of frequencies to avoid putting the six master M-F tones in the hands of every touch-tone owner. Ed's complex switching matrix puts the six master tones, in effect put a blue box, in the hands of every touch-tone owner.

Ed shows me pages of schematics, specifications and parts lists. "It's not easy to build, but everything here is in the Heathkit catalog."

Ed asks Ralph what progress he has made in his attempts to reestablish a long-term open conference line for phone phreaks. The last big conference -- the historic "2111" conference -- had been arranged through an unused Telex test-board trunk somewhere in the innards of a 4A switching machine in Vancouver, Canada. For months phone phreaks could M-F their way into Vancouver, beep out 604 (the Vancouver area code) and then beep out 2111 (the internal phone-company code for Telex testing), and find themselves at any time, day or night, on an open wire talking with an array of phone phreaks from coast to coast, operators from Bermuda, Tokyo and London who are phone-phreaksympathizers, and miscellaneous guests and technical experts. The conference was a massive exchange of information. Phone phreaks picked each other's brains clean, then developed new ways to pick the phone company's brains clean.

Ralph gave M F Boogies concerts with his home-entertainment-type electric organ, Captain Crunch demonstrated his round-the-world prowess with his notorious computerized unit and dropped leering hints of the "action" he was getting with his girl friends. (The Captain lives out or pretends to live out several kinds of fantasies to the gossipy delight of the blind phone phreaks who urge him on to further triumphs on behalf of all of them.) The somewhat rowdy Northwest phone-phreak crowd let their bitter internal feud spill over into the peaceable conference line, escalating shortly into guerrilla warfare; Carl the East Coast international tone relations expert demonstrated newly opened direct M-F routes to central offices on the island of Bahrein in the Persian Gulf, introduced a new phone-phreak friend of his in Pretoria, and explained the technical operation of the new Oakland-to Vietnam linkages. (Many phone phreaks pick up spending money by M-F-ing calls from relatives to Vietnam G.I.'s, charging $5 for a whole hour of trans-Pacific conversation.)

Day and night the conference line was never dead. Blind phone phreaks all over the country, lonely and isolated in homes filled with active sighted brothers and sisters, or trapped with slow and unimaginative blind kids in straitjacket schools for the blind, knew that no matter how late it got they could dial up the conference and find instant electronic communion with two or three other blind kids awake over on the other side of America. Talking together on a phone hookup, the blind phone phreaks say, is not much different from being there together. Physically, there was nothing more than a two-inch-square wafer of titanium inside a vast machine on Vancouver Island. For the blind kids >there< meant an exhilarating feeling of being in touch, through a kind of skill and magic which was peculiarly their own.

Last April 1, however, the long Vancouver Conference was shut off. The phone phreaks knew it was coming. Vancouver was in the process of converting from a step-by-step system to a 4A machine and the 2111 Telex circuit was to be wiped out in the process. The phone phreaks learned the actual day on which the conference would be erased about a week ahead of time over the phone company's internal-news-and-shop-talk recording.

For the next frantic seven days every phone phreak in America was on and off the 2111 conference twenty-four hours a day. Phone phreaks who were just learning the game or didn't have M-F capability were boosted up to the conference by more experienced phreaks so they could get a glimpse of what it was like before it disappeared. Top phone phreaks searched distant area codes for new conference possibilities without success. Finally in the early morning of April 1, the end came.

"I could feel it coming a couple hours before midnight," Ralph remembers. "You could feel something going on in the lines. Some static began showing up, then some whistling wheezing sound. Then there were breaks. Some people got cut off and called right back in, but after a while some people were finding they were cut off and couldn't get back in at all. It was terrible. I lost it about one a.m., but managed to slip in again and stay on until the thing died... I think it was about four in the morning. There were four of us still
hanging on when the conference disappeared into nowhere for good. We all tried to M-F up to it again of course, but we got silent termination. There was nothing there."

----------------------------------------------

An end of an era of phreaking came to an end April !, 1970, sadly it was no April Fools joke. Or was it the end...????????.....................

This Vista Gadget will add a simple "phreaker's" audio bluebox to your sidebar
BlueBox is a gadget that will add an audio BlueBox to your Vista Sidebar or desktop.

For those of you that don't know, a blue box was a phreakers [telephone....um....enthusiast] toy that simulated the DTMF [Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency] tones used to dial a touch tone telephone.

As you'd expect, they can mimic the usual keys (1-9,0,# and *). In addition, there are 4 more tones (keys A,B,C and D) that were generally reserved for special functions.


Source : http://www.softpedia.com/get/Windows-Widgets/Audio-Widget/BlueBox.shtml
Well, at least emulate the memories.............

"So the next time you see a space shuttle launch, you can tell your friends which personal computer is rated for mission-critical use in the United States space program."


Amiga owners know their machines can do a lot with a little. Because of its flexible and integrated video-friendly hardware as well as its tight, efficient multi-tasking operating system, Amigas can be found driving things such as stadium scoreboards, interactive kiosks, agricultural irrigation systems and the flight schedule displays at Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport.

The Amiga was chosen for those applications because its reliable hardware and low-overhead software means less down-time for those crucial jobs. But most Amiga owners would be suprised to learn just how much their machines' reliability is trusted to carry out one of the toughest jobs in the world - or outside of it.

For more than a dozen years, Amiga computers have been hard at work at Cape Canaveral's Hanger AE supporting the launches of every American spacecraft including the space shuttle.

Since after all, this IS rocket science, NASA must downlink a tremendous amount of data from each spacecraft; during ground tests, through the countdown and lift-off and out into space. There is no room for error in the acquisition and processing of this data. It must be accurately calculated and reliably sent from the hanger to distant space centers around the world participating in the mission. All in real time and without interruption. Since Hanger AE also supports some telemetry from the space shuttle, that importance is even greater since human lives are on the line.


Amiga screen displays live user data from the orbiting space shuttle!

Thanks to the efforts of Space Coast Amiga member, Hal Greenlee and retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Johnny Johnson, Amiga Atlanta was allowed an exclusive television tour of Hanger AE during the flight of the space shuttle Endeavour to the Russian MIR space station.

Gary Jones, principal systems engineer for NASA's software systems at Cape Canaveral told us the Amigas take in all the telemetry data from the spacecraft, scale it by applying coefficients of up to fifth order polynomials and convert the data back to engineering units for display to the engineers working the launch.

Gary went on to tell us that their first choice was the Macintosh, but as it was a closed system, Apple wouldn't give NASA enough information to get into it at the level that was needed. Talk about blowing a marketing opportunity!


Gary Jones (Left) and Hal Greenlee (Right) in Hanger AE, Cape Canaveral Air Station

He continued "We then looked at the PC, but the hardware architecture was really as bad then as it is now. So Hal was the first one who brought out one of the Amiga 1000s and we played with it."

Hal Greenlee added; "I brought it out and showed it to Dave Brown, and not more than about a month or two later, Dave had one of his own, and we were both saying to Skip, "We need to get some of these babies, and find out if we can make them work for this job"."

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."

Seven Amigas are online assigned to operational support, six are dedicated to routing data to remote space centers and another six are reserved for hardware and software development.




Amiga 4000 development system

The spacecraft supported by the Amigas include all of the Atlas-Centaurs, Delta II and Delta III, the Orbital Sciences Pegasus, Lockheed-Martin Athena and a couple different models of the Titan. GOES and GPS spacecraft data are processed, and some user data off the space shuttle.

Because of way the Amiga is laid out and because the software is all tied together, each machine can actually support more than one spacecraft at a time, if the bit rate isn't too high. A multi-tasking, multi-spacecraft personal computer!

Even though the Amigas play an important role in handling telemetry, they are versatile enough to interface with other NASA computers. Augie Friscia of Boeing Aerospace told us, "I figured out a way of transferring files from the Amiga to a Sun by converting the source files I had on the Amiga to an archive and then transferring them to a Sun machine. With just a few minor adjustments to the top of the program and the declare statements, I could compile and run it on the Sun. I did all the debugging on the Amiga and then took it to the Sun."

Gary Jones: "If its not a PC, NASA gives us a lot of grief when we try to buy anything to go with the Amigas. They want us to buy PCs and run Windows 95 and NT. We keep trying to tell them its not fast enough so they tell us to buy DEC Alphas. We tell them its too expensive. They don't like the Amiga; it doesn't cost enough."

During our January 1998 visit to Hanger AE, the space shuttle Endeavour had just finished retrieving David Wolff from the Russian Mir space station.

Gary Jones: "This is data coming down from the shuttle - the STS-89 flight that was docked with the MIR up until yesterday. These are some of the environmental parameters that the life sciences people use. They take this data, we process it with the Amiga, we remote it to them on another Amiga which then pulls up data and sends it to their PC which controls an environmental chamber so that they can duplicate the environmental conditions on the shuttle down here except for gravity. So that's their control group. They can have a group of animals or insects on the shuttle in zero G and the same animals in the same environmental conditions with normal G about five hangers down the road from here. And the Amiga data is what they use to control their growth chamber to keep the environment the same."


Amiga 4000s photographed at work during Jan. 1998 shuttle mission to Russian Mir.

In the NASA Amigas, custom interface hardware is built and used inside. But the most important difference between their Amigas and ours is on the outside. An armor-plated power button was built out of a 23-pin video connector because the engineers were concerned that the crucial switch was just a little too exposed on the front of the Amiga case!

To prove how useful even stock Amigas can be, we found out that although the 4000s have Workbench 3.1, the 2000s are still running 2.1 because the advantages of the newer operating system were not really needed.

Even after seeing Amigas hard at work in the telemetry lab, another surprise was found in the television center. Hal Greenlee; "We have a toaster system. We add titles during the launch. We might do an effect or two just by way of making the tape look more interesting. But mainly the Toaster is used to overlay time, camera angle or some kind of text data that they want to add to the picture."

Three hundred video monitors are fed by a routing system large enough to run a ommercial TV network. In addition to video, it can also route data over the entire space center.

Future plans for the NASA Amigas include supporting another model of the Titan rocket. They are also in the process of writing software for the next generation Delta rocket called the Delta III. The American Atlas-Centaur rocket is scheduled to have Russian engines installed onboard that will also need new Amiga telemetry software. Gary's team will also build a new display capability for the users that will be driven by the Amiga. "We'll send them the data over an Ethernet system, and they'll use PCs just to do displays."

Although not as easy to purchase and support as other microcomputers, Gary remained cautious about Gateway's purchase of the Amiga platform.

"We've gotten a little feedback from Hal on Gateway's purchase of the Amiga. If we start seeing that they're shipping some hardware we'll get interested then. But it's an uphill battle trying to convince NASA that they want to go with something other than one of the standard, accepted platforms."

(Article written by Bob Castro - March 1999)

http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/amiganasa_en.php

PLATO

The PLATO system was designed for Computer-Based Education. But for many people, PLATO's most enduring legacy is the online community spawned by its communication features.
PLATO originated in the early 1960's at the Urbana campus of the University of Illinois. Professor Don Bitzer became interested in using computers for teaching, and with some colleagues founded the Computer-based Education Research Laboratory (CERL). Bitzer, an electrical engineer, collaborated with a few other engineers to design the PLATO hardware. To write the software, he collected a staff of creative eccentrics ranging from university professors to high school students, few of whom had any computer background. Together they built a system that was at least a decade ahead of its time in many ways.

PLATO is a timesharing system. (It was, in fact, one of the first timesharing systems to be operated in public.) Both courseware authors and their students use the same high-resolution graphics display terminals, which are connected to a central mainframe. A special-purpose programming language called TUTOR is used to write educational software.

Throughout the 1960's, PLATO remained a small system, supporting only a single classroom of terminals. About 1972, PLATO began a transition to a new generation of mainframes that would eventually support up to one thousand users simultaneously.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmuN_RpXn6I&feature=player_embedded
[url]Source : http://www.thinkofit.com/plato/dwplato.htm[/url]

The time has come to finally get rid of all my 3.5"DD floppy disks.. they are taking up valuable cupboard space that I need back for shinier and more recent items. I know that some of them have data on that I'd like to keep, source I wrote back in the late 80's / early 90's.. midi files, soundtracker / octamed tunes.. The problem is figuring out which disks..

You see since I stopped using the Amiga regularly (this sounds like a meeting of Amiga Anonymous, of which I'm sure there'd be many many members ;p).. I've "looked after" the disks by storing them in some large wooden crates, I've got 6 of these crates, each holding around 500 disks, plus a couple of large shoe boxes, and an old 80 capacity smoked plastic lid box, each crammed as full as can be.. all in all there's somewhere around 5000 disks.. That's rather a lot to go through.. especially when you didn't label many of them appropriately..

Around 3 years ago, I tried reading the disks manually.. I made it through a hundred or so, before I realised my brain had gone numb, and I was at risk of chewing my tongue off and needing replacement eyeballs. In short, it was one of those tedious repetitive tasks that everyone really enjoys ;p

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5lkxSY7QsI&feature=player_embedded
If someone wishes to upload the video, it would be appreciated.

[url][/url]Here ya go Crusty.

Full article here: http://dwellertech.blogspot.ca/2012/02/converting-all-my-amiga-disks.html

Hi I am new to this forum, but on my first topic I wish to talk about CISPA or S.2105 and S.2151 in the Senate. They are both based on Cyber Security but instead allow your ISP to spy on the Web pages you view, you PRIVATE E-mails, online purchases including Credit Card numbers, Banking and Financial information including passwords and under this CISPA bill your ISP will not only turn your information over to the NSA or National Security Agency it will also turn your information over to third parties whoever those third parties may be NO ONE KNOWS and here is the best part, IF YOUR ISP OR THIRD PARTY LOSES THAT INFORMATION YOU CANNOT SUE YOUR ISP OR THIRD PARTY under CISPA a blanket protection policy in this CISPA bill. Plus under CISPA your ISP can read your e-mails you get and receive and even change them or stop you from getting them. So lets say you get information on how to change a hard drive in a dell computer, something political like to sign a petition to raise or not raise taxes on the rich, well under CISPA your ISP can now infiltrate that e-mail and either make sure you don't get it or change the words of that e-mail so you won't be able to sign online petitions or get information even on how to repair a computer if that third party is apple and would rather you send your computer into there repair shop and pay money rather then just have you the person fix it yourself. Plus under CISPA your ISP can block certain sites from appearing on the internet if your ISP decides it is a threat to there competition or whatever this third party that your ISP sells this information too, tells your ISP they don't want this ISP number being able to visit this site and poof your ISP puts a block on that IP Address from visiting that site.

YES ALL THIS CAN HAPPEN UNDER CISPA. Please read these 2 links to find out more about this bad bill CISPA.

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-27/home/31416365_1_online-banking-cybersecurity-crime
http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/oppose-cispa-act-now-or-forever-hold-your-peace/
This is not the only internet regulation bill. There are others. For example, In New York, The New York State Senate have introduced a Cyber Bullying bill that if you live in New York and post a comment YOU MUST INCLUDE YOUR *REAL* NAME AND ADDRESS on that post or you could go to jail. Its Called the Internet Protection Act Please Read:

http://www.wgrz.com/news/article/169486/1/Internet-Protection-Act-Criticized-For-Violating-Free-Speech
You think that's bad, RUSSIA AND CHINA have a bill before the House Republicans that will give them control under the UN to manage America's Internet Service and Free Speech online will be 100% gone.

http://www.examiner.com/article/house-set-to-examine-united-nations-bill-that-would-regulate-the-internet
That is right and there are more coming. After what happened in Egypt and with the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street the politicians are becoming very nervous as a matter of fact they released a bill called the NDAA which gives the Government the right with the US Army to abduct citizens in the middle of the night without ANY Due Process and take them to Guantanamo Bay Cube where Al-Quida is .

Read:
From ACLU
https://www.aclu.org/national-security/president-obama-signs-indefinite-detention-bill-law
From Fox News
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7ZDZxNgyBI

As you can see are politicians are cracking down on Free Speech because they want to silence political speech. The point is this is about the internet.

Please call the Senate at 2022243121 just give the operator your zip code and tell your Senators NO to S.2105 and S.2151 The CYBER SECURITY BILLS.

Please as well sign this petition to stop CISPA in the Senate.

http://act.demandprogress.org/letter/cispa_passes
THANK YOU

Please help stop
As you