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A comment on 1980s computer controls Grand Rapids Public School heat and AC.

Re:1980s computer controls Grand Rapids Public School heat a... by notvplez on Friday June 12, 2015 @11:57AM (#9706674)
Was hoping it would be an Amiga, and wasn't disappointed. Though it seems like this particular system is ripe for replacement because of the issues mentioned, I have a lot of respect for staying with old soft- and hardware instead of chasing something new and shiny when the old system still gets the job done.

A few years back a seller came to my workplace to ask if we wanted to advertise at our local cinema. We didn't, but I had a chat with the guy and was pleasantly surprised to discover that he was still creating and showing the ads using an A1200 with a genlock card running Scala (25 years old this year, real popular in the nineties with cable companies and broadcasters as big as CNN and BBC). Reason for not upgrading? "It still works great." Put a big smile on my face for the rest of the day.

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Re:1980s computer controls Grand Rapids Public School heat a... by kaffeinecoma on Friday June 12, 2015 @12:29PM (#9706901)
For those confused by 25 year old Scala: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scala_(company).
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Re:1980s computer controls Grand Rapids Public School heat a... by douche on Friday June 12, 2015 @11:58PM (#9709809)
Thank you. This being HN, I immediately was thinking the FP-ish programming language, which would seem to indicate that it predates the JVM...
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Re:1980s computer controls Grand Rapids Public School heat a... by HeyLaughingBoy on Friday June 12, 2015 @12:32PM (#9706931)
I'm a bit confused: are you saying that the system was running Scala for 25 years? Thought Scala was just a few years ago.

And was the genlock card a Video Toaster by any chance?

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Re:1980s computer controls Grand Rapids Public School heat a... by notvplez on Friday June 12, 2015 @02:21PM (#9707655)
The first version of Scala was released in 1990 if I'm not mistaken, he probably used a later version as he was using a A1200 which had the AGA-chipset that improved graphics considerably. He'd been using it "for about twenty years", and as this was two or three years ago and the A1200 was released in 1992 he probably had a 22 year run on the same hardware and software. He didn't specify the card he used, but I think it's safe to say it was the Video Toaster given its popularity at the time.
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Re:1980s computer controls Grand Rapids Public School heat a... by wgx on Friday June 12, 2015 @03:42PM (#9708102)
Scala (the programming language) and Scala (the Amiga video software) are two different things. :)
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