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17 Articles

The OS/2 Operating System Didn’t Die… It Went Underground

June 20, 2019 by 58 Comments

One problem with building things using state-of-the-art techniques is that sometimes those that look like they will be “the next big thing” turn out to be dead ends. Next thing you know, that hot new part or piece of software is hard to get or unmaintained. This is especially true if you are building something with a long life span. A case in point is the New York City subway system. Back in the 1990s the transit authority decided to adopt IBM’s new OS/2 operating system. Why not? It was robust and we used to always say “no one ever got fired for buying IBM.”

There was one problem. OS/2 was completely eclipsed by other operating systems, notably Windows and — mostly — has sunk from the public view. [Andrew Egan’s] post covers just how the conversion to a card-based system pushed OS/2 underground all over the Big Apple, and it is an interesting read.

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Low Tech High Safety And The NYC Subway System

January 11, 2019 by 29 Comments

The year is 1894. You are designing a train system for a large city. Your boss informs you that the mayor’s office wants assurances that trains can’t have wrecks. The system will start small, but it is going to get big and complex over time with tracks crossing and switching. Remember, it is 1894, so computing and wireless tech are barely science fiction at this point. The answer — at least for the New York City subway system — is a clever system of signals and interlocks that make great use of the technology of the day. Bernard S. Greenberg does a great job of describing the system in great detail.

The subway began operation in 1904, well over 30 years since the above-ground trains began running. A clever system of signals and the tracks themselves worked together with some mechanical devices to make the subway very safe. Even if you tried to run two trains together, the safety systems would prevent it.

On the face of it, the system is very simple. There are lights that show red, yellow, and green. If you drive, you know what these mean. But what’s really interesting is the scheme used at the time to make them light.

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The Pontoon Bridge Being Floated As An NYC Transit Fix

March 8, 2018 by 95 Comments

New York City’s L train carries about 400,000 passengers a day, linking Manhattan and Brooklyn and bringing passengers along 14th Street, under the East River, and through the neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Bushwick, Ridgewood, Brownsville, and Canarsie. About 225,000 of these passengers pass through the Canarsie Tunnel, a two-tube cast iron rail tunnel built below the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn in 1924. Like many other New York City road and subway tunnels, the Canarsie Tunnel was badly damaged when Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge inundated the tubes with million of gallons of salt water. Six years later, the impending closure of the tunnel is motivating New Yorkers to develop their own ambitious infrastructure ideas.

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Join Hackaday At MakeIt NYC This Thursday

February 10, 2016 by 2 Comments

New York is coming on strong as a hardware epicenter — exciting hardware culture can be found at every turn. Tomorrow, we’re bringing food and fun to one such event, the monthly MakeIt NYC meetup.

MakeIt is hosted by PCB.ng, a Brooklyn based PCB manufacturer and board stuffer whose mission it is to make electronics manufacturing available to everyone. [Sophi Kravitz] will be on hand and speaking about Hackaday.io and the Hackaday Prize. There are many other talks lined up, including The LED Artist (amazing work if you haven’t seen), Microchip who will show off their new Chip-KIT Wi-Fire,  Thimble (an electronics subscription service delivering monthly hardware kits), and Botfactory’s Squink, a desktop electronics manufacturing machine.

In addition to the planned talks we’re always interested in seeing the projects you’re working on. Bring along anything that fits in a pocket or a backpack. We’ll see you there!

This Is How You Run A Hackathon: Tech Valley Center Of Gravity

February 4, 2016 by 5 Comments

What’s not to love about a hackathon? The junk food and caffeine that fuel the weekend; the highs that come with success and the lows that come when the blue smoke is released; the desperate search for inspiration as the clock ticks away; nerve-wracking pitches to the judges, hoping against hope that everything works in the demo. Hackathons are the contact sport of the hacker world, bringing in top competitors and eager upstarts, and when done well you just might attract interested “civilians” and other newbies that will catch the hacking bug from what they witness.

Such was the scene at the Tech Valley Center of Gravity in Troy, NY over the last weekend of January. New for 2016, the CoG is hosting a series of four hardware hackathons this year, each with a different theme. This event’s theme was “Internet of Things”, and the call went out to any and all to come compete for bragging rights and over $1,000 in prizes. Incentives to compete included some big name corporate sponsors, like AT&T, and judging and mentoring provided by the likes of SparkFun’s [Jeff Branson]. There was also a steady stream of food and drink, saturation coverage by local media outlets, and your humble Hackaday writer and his son, who made the trip up to Troy with a small passel of Hackaday swag and a curiosity to see how the CoG has fared since our last visit at the grand opening of their glorious new home. We were not disappointed.

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SparkFun, AT&T To Sponsor Hackathon At Troy’s TVCoG

December 19, 2015 by 2 Comments

Big-name corporate sponsors, top-notch judges and mentoring, 36 hours to play in a huge new hackerspace, and all the Cheetos and Red Bull you need to stoke the creative fires. Sounds like a hackathon, and it’ll roll into The Tech Valley Center of Gravity in Troy, New York next month. And from the look of it, it’s going to be a big deal. You should be there.

_DSC0140You might recall the TVCoG from a story we did this summer on the grand opening of their amazing newly renovated space in downtown Troy. Occupying an entire city block in a historic department store building and housing not only a huge hackerspace but a tech company incubator with manufacturing capabilities and a STEM outreach space, the CoG now has the room to reach out into the community and host big events. The hackathon scheduled for January 30 and 31 and is only the first of four events planned for 2016. This one has the theme “Internet of Things” and will feature SparkFun’s Jeff Branson as mentor and judge.

Here’s a call to arms for Hackaday readers in the northeast: let’s pack this hackathon and make it huge. There’s already a bunch of Jolly Wrencher stickers scattered all over from our last visit, so you’ll feel right at home. Head over to the TVCoG site and sign up for this one. We’d really like to see HaD take home bragging rights. And you can be sure we’ll be covering the event and bringing some swag of our own.

[Thanks to Duncan Crary for the tip!]

Retrotechtacular: New York City’s Secret Computer

October 17, 2015 by 78 Comments

Over 750,000 people pass through New York City’s Grand Central Terminal each day. Located in the heart of the city, it’s one of the largest train stations in the world. Its historic significance dates back to 1913, when it opened its doors to the public. At the time, few were aware of the secret computer that sat deep in a sub basement below the hustle and bustle of the city’s busy travelers. Its existence was kept secret all the way into the 1980’s.

Westinghouse had designed a system that would allow authorities to locate a stuck train in a tunnel. There were cords stretched the length of the tunnels. If a train stalled, the operator could reach out and yank on the cord. This would set off an alarm that would alert everyone of the stuck train. The problem being that even though they knew a train was down, they did not know exactly where. And that’s where the computer come in. Westinghouse designed it to calculate where the train was, and write its location on some ticker tape.

So this is the part of the post where we tell you how the computer established where exactly the train breakdown occurred. Although the storyteller in the video is admirably enthusiastic about telling the story, our depth of detail on the engineering that went into this seems nowhere to be found. Let us know in the comments below if you have a source of more information. Or just post your own conjecture on how you would have done it with the early 20th century tech.

The invention of the two way radio made the whole thing obsolete not long after is was built. Never-the-less, it remains intact to this day.

Thanks to [Greg] for the tip!