As a kid i remember being fascinated by technical difficulties screens, EAS tests, etc. Generally anything that unwittingly revealed the technical aspects of running a broadcast station. This was before we really knew how to use the internet even, so for many years, I'd wonder what a screen saying "No Access Card" or "Coriogen Eclipse" meant. When we learned about Google, it was suddenly a very educational experience to google these things and learn what was going on behind the scenes. I'm a software engineer today, but surely the nearest parallel universe version of me grew up to be a broadcast engineer.

On Toronto's public transportation, TTC, occasionally the upcoming bus stop ticker would flash diagnostic information(?) and "64K RAM" instead of the upcoming stop name. Doesn't seem like there's a wiki page about these faults yet.

Actually, the Canadian government suppresses it because they just really don’t want anyone to know how to get to 64K RAM, ON.

What would they be running them on that has so little memory these days? Esp32?

I think I get it too. There's a strange, hard-to-describe feeling there for me. It's like a "comfy, but darkly eerie" feeling whenever something like a broadcast technical difficulty or "Max Headroom"-esque event happens.

Like, I'm sitting comfy watching TV, and there's some technical glitch that pulls back the curtain a little bit. It's interesting and not as irritating as a bug in say a website, because I'm still intrinsically doing the activity I was previously (watching television), I'm just now inexplicably watching a different broadcast.

Who knows, it might be the dreamlike quality Cartoon Network/Toonami/Adult Swim had in the late 90s/early 2000s as well. The technical glitches fit thematically with the low-fi beats.

My favorite niche catalog is this list of chairs of star trek: https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/database/chairs-trek.htm