Anyone able to tell me something about this type of system? It's about 300
miles north of me, and I'm considering
submitting a tender for it. Some idea of it's value, probably as scrap
(since that's who I'd probably be bidding against)
would be good. FWIW, I personally feel it is historically significant in
view of the job it did and worthy of preservation.
The system is from the (now closed) Joint US/Australian Space Defense
facility at Nurrungar, near Woomera.
('Way out in the desert of northern South Australia.)
The entire place is up for sale by tender, houses, buildings, radomes,
dishes, power & AC plant etc - plus the
IBM Mainframe that did all the data processing.
Quote:
"The Data Reduction Centre used the IBM 4381 Computer System to process and
record infrared data detected by satellite and transmitted by the Satellite
Tracking Station (SRS). The raw Satellite data was relayed through a variety
of computers and electronic equipment and finally to the DRC's IBM 4381
mainframe computers. The mainframe computers each had dual processors: a
support processor and an instruction processor. The processors filtered out
any spurious data by comparing the data against pre programmed event
criteria. Data that were not needed were discardedwhile data that met
certain criteria were formatted and sent to the SOC for further evaluation,
this time by human beings."
End quote.
There are numerous pics of the the system at:-
http://www.evansclarke.com.au/megatender/usaf_ibm_4381/index.htm
If you click on one of the thumbnails it will show a large version of the
pic with a next button to go through all of them.
If you want to see the other stuff that's on offer take a look at :-
http://www.evansclarke.com.au/megatender/index.html
Cheers
Geoff Roberts
Computer Systems Manager
Saint Mark's College
Port Pirie, South Australia.
Email: geoffrob_at_stmarks.pp.catholic.edu.au
netcafe_at_pirie.mtx.net.au
ICQ #: 1970476
Received on Mon Feb 21 2000 - 20:31:51 GMT