What's the rarest or most unusual computer-related item do you own? [Tek 4132]
Jon Elson
elson at pico-systems.com
Wed Jan 18 11:57:25 CST 2017
On 01/18/2017 07:08 AM, geneb wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Jan 2017, Jon Elson wrote:
>
>> On 01/17/2017 01:50 PM, geneb wrote:
>>>
>>> I used to work on a 727 flight simulator that used a
>>> Varian 620 to generate the visuals. The display was
>>> capable of addressing 1024 points of light and that's
>>> how the runways and airport outline were drawn. Pretty
>>> neat stuff. Here's some pics of the system that ran the
>>> sim:
>>> http://flightweb.simpits.org/BehindTheScenes/727sim_page1.html
>>>
>> Was that a McDonnell Vital system? That's where the
>> Varian I had came from. Vital II had stroke writing and
>> variable beam width, ideal for painting the runway,
>> stripes, numbers, etc.
>>
> It's a Vital I. I don't recall a McDonnell branding
> though. I _think_ the 727-100 sim was built by
> Conductron-Missouri, which was the same company that build
> the 737-200 that was located in the next room.
>
Conductron-Missouri was an outfit that may have been started
by ex-McDonnell people, and did a large portion of their
business supplying electronic systems to McDonnell. It was
later bought by McDonnell, and became McDonnell Douglas
Electronics Co.
>
> The sad thing is, both sims are gone. Simulator Training
> went bankrupt due to the aviation industry disruption
> caused by 9/11. A guy from Boeing/Alteon showed up with a
> corporate credit card. I didn't have the resources to bid
> against him. :( The 727 went for $1200 and the $737 went
> for $1500. Both sims were fully operational and both were
> purposefully destroyed after purchase.
>
Wow, kind of surprised they were concerned about that.
Especially a 727 sim, who the heck is still flying THOSE??
A friend of mine got 4 mirrors out of Vital II sims, and has
one on a large X-Y display. He wrote a sim program that ran
on a Data General Nova clone (he built it himself, not a
commercial clone). It is no longer working, some stuff went
up in smoke last time he turned it on. But, would be great
to put a giant LCD monitor on those mirrors and use it with
FlightGear.
Jon
More information about the cctech
mailing list