For certain situations, older hardware is preferred or even needed to accomplish a task. This is common in industrial applications where old machinery might not be supported by modern hardware or software. Even in these situations though, we have the benefit of modern technology and the Internet to get these systems up and running again. [Old Computers Sucked] is not only building a mid-90s system to receive NOAA satellite imagery, he’s doing it only with tools and equipment available to someone from this era.
Of course the first step here is to set up a computer and the relevant software that an amateur radio operator would have had access to in 1994. [Old Computers Sucked] already had the computer, so he turned to JV-FAX for software. This tool can decode the APT encoding used by some NOAA satellites without immediately filling his 2 MB hard drive, so with that out of the way he starts on building the radio.
In the 90s, wire wrapping was common for prototyping so he builds a hardware digitizer interface using this method, which will be used to help the computer interface with the radio. [Old Computers Sucked] is rolling his own hardware here as well, based on a Motorola MC3362 VHF FM chip and a phase-locked loop (PLL), although this time on a PCB since RF doesn’t behave nicely with wire wrap. The PCB design is also done with software from the 90s, in this case Protel which is known today as Altium Designer.
In the end, [Old Computers Sucked] was able to receive portions of imagery from weather satellites still using the analog FM signals from days of yore, but there are a few problems with his build that are keeping him from seeing perfectly clear imagery. He’s not exactly sure what’s wrong but he suspects its with the hardware digitizer as it was behaving erratically earlier in the build. We admire his dedication to the time period, though, down to almost every detail of the build. It reminds us of [saveitforparts]’s effort to get an 80s satellite internet experience a little while back.
So it’s about as useful as toilet seat made out of frozen peanut butter jelly.
What ?
I wanted to build this so bad as a kid… https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Poptronics/90s/90/PE-1990-11.pdf
Wow, you just took me way back.
there are no more APT satellites. the last APT sat, NOAA-15 was decommissioned a few weeks ago. the end of an era.
there are still transmissions in 137 MHz from the Russian Meteor says, but they are LRPT and not possible to decode like in 1994.
Yep. It’s a sad time. I was looking forward to trying some APT downloads from the NOAA sats
I got my first “big boy” computer in 1988, with a 40 MB hard drive. 2MB is an artificially low restriction.
Still, looks like he had an absolute blast building this.
When I read “2MB”, I immediately thought about the ‘double capacity’ floppies that could hold about 3 MB of data, and that some PC bioses directly supported.
Looks like Orbitron.
With the demise of APT, this should be converted to WeFax reception instead. Still lots of Coast Guard transmissions every day.
Bill Gates, creator of Windows.
Cept he never said that
Why do you show a “Manhattan” built circuit when the description talks about:”wire wrap”. Is the picture wrong or is the description?
Ummm, asking for a friend.
The Manhattan style board is a LNA featured at the end of the video. A bit confusing, but not false.
Some might miss that, but the guy is also reverse-engineering demo version Protel 1.0 with a hex editor to get additional components in the library. I’m rarely impressed by project videos and I usually skip them but boy I’m glad I didn’t ignore this one.
Old computers did NOT suck, obviously your experience is limited
That’s the user name of the person in the article..
I thought for sure you were going to mention something about SETI from the title.
Honestly, listening to arbitrary atmospheric details or just strange radio signals in general is a weirdly comfortable vibe.