4 ms·

There's still an active community writing tight assembly code for vintage computers like the C64, and there was a ton of excitement around Notch's 0x10c, which

by quux 11y ago

There's still an active community writing tight assembly code for vintage computers like the C64, and there was a ton of excitement around Notch's 0x10c, which was a virtual computer of the same class as Voyager's. There's clearly a yearning among modern programmers for the days where the entire system could be understood by one brain. This probably isn't practical, or sane, but I wonder what would happen if Nasa released an open source simulator for Voyager and invited the community help implement the software fixes they need. There might some really good devs who would do it just for the challenge. Think of it as 0x10c with a purpose.

avar 11y ago
The concept sounds cool, but what sort of fixes could the Voyager probes possibly need? They were launched in 1977, that's almost 40 years ago. As far as I know they're waking up every once in a while and sending telemetry back. It would be cool to have access to the source code and an emulator, but I really don't find it plausible that members of the general public could submit patches to something that's been running smoothly for 40 years, and where the risks of changes far outweigh the benefits of keeping the existing software running as-is.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- saganus 11y ago
  The article says that part of the need to get programmers back in the project is to be able to get exact readings on the amount of energy that's being used and the amount left. It appears like they are currently working with estimates (e.g. they cite a use of 3.2 Watts but it's actually 3.0 due to margins of error in the original design. Now they want to know exactly how much power is consumed). So maybe they don't need fixes in the traditional sense that something is broken, but fixes in that they need the spacecraft to do stuff that wasn't designed for. Another example they cite is when they revamped the software in 1990 so they could better automate certain functions since they were preparing for the interstellar part of the journey and they needed certain automatic procedures which apparently were done manually in the past.
  - noselasd 11y ago
    It seems being a fortran/assembly programmer is just a small part of whats needed. What they seem to need are engineers that can teach themselves quite deep domain knowledge of the voyagers to figure out how they work, reverse engineer the hardware and software that arn't documented. (and eventually do some programming, mainly on old ground based code, and certainly without bricking the probes if the flight software needs to be altered).
dalke 11y ago
"There might some really good devs who would do it just for the challenge" There might. There was that ISEE-3 Reboot Project last year to reconnect to the International Sun-Earth Explorer 3 probe. Were I a manager, my concern would be to have the in-house competence to be able to review those fixes. If it costs less to hire someone to make the fixes than to be able to review external contributions for the fixes, and/or if there's less uncertainty in being able to get a result in the right time frame, then I know which way I would go. Failure to connect to ISEE-3 doesn't have the negative risk impact of making a mistake with Voyager. Anyway, in this case it's more than just the code. The new position requires "combing through secondary documents and correspondence", and presumably that means access to the primary literature, in an archive with unscanned materials. And while some retired engineers may have no problems with others 'picking their brains directly', it would be better to coordinate those questions instead of having a dozen different people ask the same questions.
Joof 11y ago
This actually sounds kind of fun... (24y/o)
Natsu 11y ago
What ever happened to 0x10c? There was much excitement for a while and then... nothing. I'm sort of assuming I'd have heard any big news here.
- rodrickbrown 11y ago
  Markus "N0tch" Persson became a billionaire and the rest was history.
  - noir_lord 11y ago
    That's not really fair or the entire picture, he announced very early then the internet community that built up around 0x10c got really demanding and the pressure on him was pretty huge so he stepped back, I was bummed by his decision but I could see why, it did get out of hand. EDIT: should mention others have run with the idea and are actually building it https://www.reddit.com/r/techcompliant https://www.reddit.com/r/techcompliant is the subreddit for the project.
SixSigma 11y ago
> There's clearly a yearning among modern programmers for the days where the entire system could be understood by one brain. This is why I like programming on the MBED platform [1] (or just AVR). Assembler, and IoT fun at the same time. Works with ethernet, serial, jtag - great fun [1] https://www.mbed.com/ https://www.mbed.com/

by quux 11y ago

avar 11y ago

The concept sounds cool, but what sort of fixes could the Voyager probes possibly need? They were launched in 1977, that's almost 40 years ago. As far as I know they're waking up every once in a while and sending telemetry back. It would be cool to have access to the source code and an emulator, but I really don't find it plausible that members of the general public could submit patches to something that's been running smoothly for 40 years, and where the risks of changes far outweigh the benefits of keeping the existing software running as-is.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
saganus 11y ago
The article says that part of the need to get programmers back in the project is to be able to get exact readings on the amount of energy that's being used and the amount left. It appears like they are currently working with estimates (e.g. they cite a use of 3.2 Watts but it's actually 3.0 due to margins of error in the original design. Now they want to know exactly how much power is consumed). So maybe they don't need fixes in the traditional sense that something is broken, but fixes in that they need the spacecraft to do stuff that wasn't designed for. Another example they cite is when they revamped the software in 1990 so they could better automate certain functions since they were preparing for the interstellar part of the journey and they needed certain automatic procedures which apparently were done manually in the past.
- noselasd 11y ago
  It seems being a fortran/assembly programmer is just a small part of whats needed. What they seem to need are engineers that can teach themselves quite deep domain knowledge of the voyagers to figure out how they work, reverse engineer the hardware and software that arn't documented. (and eventually do some programming, mainly on old ground based code, and certainly without bricking the probes if the flight software needs to be altered).

dalke 11y ago

"There might some really good devs who would do it just for the challenge" There might. There was that ISEE-3 Reboot Project last year to reconnect to the International Sun-Earth Explorer 3 probe. Were I a manager, my concern would be to have the in-house competence to be able to review those fixes. If it costs less to hire someone to make the fixes than to be able to review external contributions for the fixes, and/or if there's less uncertainty in being able to get a result in the right time frame, then I know which way I would go. Failure to connect to ISEE-3 doesn't have the negative risk impact of making a mistake with Voyager. Anyway, in this case it's more than just the code. The new position requires "combing through secondary documents and correspondence", and presumably that means access to the primary literature, in an archive with unscanned materials. And while some retired engineers may have no problems with others 'picking their brains directly', it would be better to coordinate those questions instead of having a dozen different people ask the same questions.

Joof 11y ago

This actually sounds kind of fun... (24y/o)

Natsu 11y ago

What ever happened to 0x10c? There was much excitement for a while and then... nothing. I'm sort of assuming I'd have heard any big news here.

rodrickbrown 11y ago
Markus "N0tch" Persson became a billionaire and the rest was history.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  That's not really fair or the entire picture, he announced very early then the internet community that built up around 0x10c got really demanding and the pressure on him was pretty huge so he stepped back, I was bummed by his decision but I could see why, it did get out of hand. EDIT: should mention others have run with the idea and are actually building it https://www.reddit.com/r/techcompliant https://www.reddit.com/r/techcompliant is the subreddit for the project.

SixSigma 11y ago

> There's clearly a yearning among modern programmers for the days where the entire system could be understood by one brain. This is why I like programming on the MBED platform [1] (or just AVR). Assembler, and IoT fun at the same time. Works with ethernet, serial, jtag - great fun [1] https://www.mbed.com/ https://www.mbed.com/