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