Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2012 21:44:19 -0700
From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
To: cctalk at
classiccmp.org
Subject: TIROS-related stuff
Message-ID: <5019A333.22904.30EAD0D at cclist.sydex.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
A fellow posted some stuff related to the TIROS weather satellite on
Erik's Vintage Computer forum.
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?31952-Seeking-
info-on-Satellite-Weather-gear-%28Was-Seeking-info&highlight=multibus
It appears to be a Multibus system that uses two Omnibyte 68K CPUs, a
Matrox video card and an unidentified fourth card as well as some
sort of calibration board (not Multibus apparently).
Does anyone know anything about this? The owner is completely
ignorant about this sort of thing and wonders if he should just scrap
the whole thing.
Hmmm, the TIROS system was WAY before Multibus and M68K, the first one
went up
in 1960. I have a few bits of the TIROS sun angle computer, and looked
at some of the
gear that recorded the slow-scan images to film.
Alden was the big maker of weather fax machines in the 1970-1980 range.
The date on the plate indicates it was a 1984 NOAA contract and the unit was
built in 1987. I can't believe there was any TIROS system operational
at that
time, I suspect the TIROS label was a historical artifact in Alden's
documentation,
and that this system was actually used to receive and print out GOES images.
The GOES satellite sent high bit rate data while the mirror swept the image
of the earth, then received a processed image from a ground station
during the time the mirror was sweeping
space and relayed that to ground receiving stations for printout. Ships at
sea could print out weather maps in near real time, for instance.
Jon