The first generation of real-time train information screens for British railways came in the form of suspended color CRTs in familiar rounded fiberglass housings. They were a ubiquitous sight across the network for years, until of course suddenly, they weren’t. Can they be brought back? [Heliomass] has come about as close as it’s possible to be, with a modern emulation that runs from live data feeds.
The screens were recognizably using the same graphics standards as Teletext, and thus it was no surprise back in the day to see from time to time an Acorn boot screen in a railway station.
We remember some debate at the time as to whether they were running Archimedes of BBC Micro hardware behind the scenes, though it seems likely it might have been the industrial BBC Micro derivative.
The modern recreation uses an emulated BBC Micro for the signage, with a serial connection to a server component running in Python on more modern hardware. This handles grabbing the data and sending it to the Beeb for display. The result is an unexpected bit of nostalgia for anyone who spent the 1980s or ’90s in south east England.
Nice! I grew up in Essex and travelled a lot on trains in the ’70s through to mid-’90s.
Now we just need a random “explaination for delays” for that real nostalgic feel 😁
Let me start:
Train operator suffering from pinworms.
Lights at railyard burnt out again. Can’t see for nuts.
our cloud provider is down again…
“As They Should Be” – Oh come on HAD – way to run a tech blog while insisting we should go back in time and unravel all of the pain-staking changes made for great reasons (even if they’re just stepping stones).
In my opinion – the way it should be starts and ends at the smartphone/smartwatch/earbud – there’s no need to scatter expensive, energy wasting, hard to read/hear, light and sound polluting systems all around the station.
When everybody has smartphone (or equivalent in this regard) technology that can communicate with them any way that they prefer – in their language, audio/visual, vibration, timing etc.
Then we can and should strip all of this equipment and either recycle it (carefully because of harmful components) or put it in a museum.
pains-taking (taking pains : expending, showing, or involving diligent care and effort)
vs. pain-staking (impalement intended to maximize suffering?)
My bad – I should hope most can still understand given the context. I’ve found that my spell checker is somewhat cursed and I’m no better when I’m in the mood to comment. Plz forgive me :)
>pains-taking
wolololo I thoght you said “penis-talking” XDDDDD
I truly wish we lived in a world where your comment won’t be deleted because it “offends” people – because you’re not at all wrong to state such a thing :D
I do find that HAD in general seems to uncomfortably (for me) lean towards nostalgia and the history of tech rather than educating people about the very serious and well intentioned reasons for the evolution of technology. There’s mountains of very interesting (to those who care) things to learn but no author seems to be able to capture it properly – instead we just get a mass attractive spin on one aspect of something already going viral elsewhere. (Sorry I’m drunk again)
I can say “it’s neat it using few colors and high contrast for readability, machine font, contains only the most important information, has a wide viewing angle, reminds me of youth” but that’s about it.
I took it as a tongue-in-cheek “opinion”. As when in conversation one might jest “as it should be”.
I did not realize that hackaday and/or one of its authors was authorized to issue mandates.
You’re quite right – but my world is small and hackaday makes up a good portion of it somehow. I should have understood that this was part of a nieche interest and left it alone but I’m struggling to find anywhere that can be the only ones that hear my deeply held opinions/frustrations on matters. x
Hi there! I’m not a big fan of smartphones; they’ve already permeated society too much.
Smartphones aren’t an enrichment of human life (anymore), but over the years turned into an necessity. A burden.
In real life, we’re forced to own and use them. Being “offline” once in a while now requires an apology.
The iPhone and its successors also ended the classic desktop internet (it still exists to some extent in Japan).
Before smartphones, the internet was a physical place (the family PC, often) to escape from everyday life.
It was an adventure, an escape, and a vast place to meet people. Like a jungle.
Now it’s a dystopia, and the same people who once loved the internet,
or who might been early adopters way back in the 1990s, even,
are now trying to escape back to real life or try to salvage the old web as much as they can (by switching to Gopher, Telnet/SSH-based BBSes, or creating NeoCities websites).
Nevertheless, I’ve always enjoyed using PDAs like Pocket PCs and Palm OS devices.
They were never mandatory, but optional in their time.
They also had optional WiFi or 2G modules available to them, to those needing them.
In that respect, I really like the idea of having alternatives to the mainstream.
Older technologies usually come from a time when things were more thoughtful,
also in parts because people had to sit down and were forced to think on their own to find a solution.
Again, this was also contributed thanks to the lack of smartphones.
So, old technology is not bad per se just because it’s old.
The engine-less bicycle is old, too and is more relevant than ever.
Reusing good concepts and integrating them into contemporary life can prove to be positive. 🙂👍
(Sorry for the bad wording, I’ve used a translator here.)
First installations 1986. Archimedes released 1987.
So they would originally have been BBC micro. 1980s BR didn’t spend money it didn’t have to either so if they switched to Archimedes they’d have had to have a reason.
Also, the SAA5050 output looks very different to the pixelated emulated mode 7 of the Archimedes.
I was a c. 2016-2019 UK resident, so my idea of how it oughta be features a matrix of LCD monitors. How the information is displayed on a departure board may have changed, but I’ll wager when hasn’t: about 5 minutes before.
The crowd waits expectantly, the display updates… and they’re off! Not an unseeming sprint to the appropriate platforms mind you, but certainly with a spring in their step. This took some getting used to for my wife, not having been a rail habituate until arriving in its birthplace.
I would love to see this hooked to an original BR departure board CRT!