Railway Information Screens
RLM
Micro Men, and the resultant nostalgia fest has provoked a memory (False
or otherwise) in me. I'm sure that I can remember seeing a screen in a
railway station go blank and then display something similar to the BBC
Micro's startup screen.
I did some googling, but never found anything. Does anything know if
there is any possibility that I really saw this, or was it a result of
eating bad cheese too close to bed time?
Cheers,
Becky.
Chris Hughes
RLM <mothergla...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hiya,
> Micro Men, and the resultant nostalgia fest has provoked a memory (False
> or otherwise) in me. I'm sure that I can remember seeing a screen in a
> railway station go blank and then display something similar to the BBC
> Micro's startup screen.
Not sure they were Beebs, but Acorns were currently used for this sort
of thing.
--
Chris Hughes
Steve Fryatt
AIUI, a lot of the old BR systems were 8-bit Acorns of some flavour or other
in Mode 7. I think Sheffield was one of the last remaining installations,
and IIRC Glasgow Central had such screens at the end of its platforms when I
was commuting through it in the late 90s. I've also a vague memory that
either Queen Street or Waverley had them just post-1995, too.
--
Steve Fryatt - Leeds, England
Rob Kendrick
Yes. The company you're thinking of is Nexus Alpha, who also did the
Southampton ROMANCE public transport system. (If my rusty memory
serves. It's been 15 years since I lived there!)
They're still trading, still doing transport information systems. I
was at an expo recently at which they were participating, and a RiscPC
was visible behind their stand.
B.
Theo Markettos
> I did some googling, but never found anything. Does anything know if
> there is any possibility that I really saw this, or was it a result of
> eating bad cheese too close to bed time?
Yes:
http://bbcmicro.net/old-8bs/see/dohtrain.jpg
There have been various threads speculating on the location. The prescence
of third rail in the reflection suggests somewhere south of London. If you
search for 'dohtrain bbc' it brings up a few of the threads.
Theo
Nomura
wrote:
Always strange how some of the old RAilway Station Monitors reminded
me of a larger MicroVitec Cub Monitor in the 80's
jamie powell
"Steve Fryatt" <ne...@stevefryatt.org.uk> wrote in message
news:mpro.krkvmh02...@stevefryatt.org.uk...
I can recall seeing the RISC OS 3 pinboard textures used as backgrounds for
display slides at Stockport station in the very late 1990s, although I never
confirmed an actual RISC OS machine was the source.
no...@brayshaw.org.uk
> Hiya,
Yes, they were originally generated by dedicated software running on
Acorn A5000's.
A company called Nexus Alpha was commissioned by me to produce
software running on A5000's in Police Control Rooms to allow officers
to easily report traffic incidents and hold-ups to the BBC for
inclusion on CEEFAX's travel pages (I was running the BBC's Travel
Information department in those days) and Network Radio's travel
reports. I also looked at adapting this software for the reporting of
train running information for similar purposes, and we tailored it for
this purpose also.
A guy from Southern Region British Rail saw even more potential in
this (I think his name was Derek, but not sure!), and I suggested he
deals directly with Nexus Alpha to produce a dedicated system for
them. This proved extremely successful, and was still running on
A5000's. I'm fairly sure the original system used the Microvitec Cub
monitors, as supplied with the Acorn computers.
Over the years, Nexus Alpha have developed their system and expanded
to cover the whole of British Rail (or Network Rail, as it is now
known). I doubt if they still use A5000's, but the origins were in
that humble machine!
Incidentally, the whole of CEEFAX in those days was produced and
up-loaded to the mainframe transmission computer on BBC 'B' Micros,
using software developed by one of the BBC's engineers.
Jeremy.
--
Jeremy Brayshaw <><
RLM
Thank you all for the interesting information. I thought the following
might interest some folks, it's rail related, but not Acorn..
I travel daily by train from Erdington to Birmingham New Street. The
trains have little monitors in some parts of the carriages which (when
they are on) usually show sky news on a loop. Last monday the train I
was on was displaying a 'Linux' style console screen where it would try
to ping a set of ip addresses and then reboot. I have a really poor photo.
Peace,
Becky.