8 ms·
If you're interested in this, someone on YouTube got a WeatherStar 4000 (device that sat at cable headends and generated the local weather report graphics) and
by ndiddy 1y ago
If you're interested in this, someone on YouTube got a WeatherStar 4000 (device that sat at cable headends and generated the local weather report graphics) and wrote all new firmware to make 90's style weather reports on the real hardware. This was necessary because the original firmware was downloaded over satellite so it's now lost. It looks basically identical to the real Weather Channel from the 90s, except it doesn't have their logo in the corner (I guess for trademark reasons). Here's a stream of his WeatherStar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66mSjXpfD2c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66mSjXpfD2c
- jjk7 1y agoIf you read his devlog, he started this project not knowing assembly or C... teaching himself as he went. Incredible.
- jimmydddd 1y agoImportantly, it also plays Weather Channel-esque background music.
- jazzyjackson 1y agoThanks for mentioning that, had me digging around for where I can find the music. The youtube link lead me to the project's hackaday log, which is extremely detailed but lacks any mention of music [0] The submission link's github page [1] links to a website listing all the tracks that ever played [2], explaining they dropped the music from the project so as not to deal with copyright claims. too bad fair use isn't clear enough to apply here, I think its a relatively transformative use and doesn't compete with the original. [0] https://hackaday.io/project/178144-reverse-engineering-the-weather-star-4000#j-discussions-title https://hackaday.io/project/178144-reverse-engineering-the-w... [1] https://github.com/netbymatt/ws4kp https://github.com/netbymatt/ws4kp [2] https://twcclassics.com/audio/artists.html https://twcclassics.com/audio/artists.html
- dylan604 1y agowhy would fair use be at play here? TWC would have paid a license fee through ASCAP or whomever for the rights to broadcast that music. They didn't just download a bunch of mp3 files from Napster and try to disrupt broadcasting.
- jazzyjackson 1y agoYou're right, of course. I guess I just put a lot of weight on the charm of keeping old things running, and think there's value to the public in allowing free use of music, particularly for non-commercial/educational purposes.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- theklub 1y agoNot sure if you are aware but the weather Channel sold music CDs I have one.
- rubit_xxx17 1y agoCan also stream it at Internet archive: https://archive.org/details/WeatherChannelMusic https://archive.org/details/WeatherChannelMusic https://archive.org/details/weatherscancompletecollection https://archive.org/details/weatherscancompletecollection https://archive.org/details/lfset1 https://archive.org/details/lfset1 https://archive.org/details/the-weather-channel-presents-the-best-of-smooth-jazz-full-album https://archive.org/details/the-weather-channel-presents-the... https://archive.org/details/the-weather-channel-presents-smooth-jazz-ii-cd-rip https://archive.org/details/the-weather-channel-presents-smo... https://archive.org/details/weatherscanlocalmusic https://archive.org/details/weatherscanlocalmusic YouTube has a few TWC playlists: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMUZjd023YBtp0iB962Uz7ao4vd6pkU5E https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMUZjd023YBtp0iB962Uz... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYyTo0ex76Q&list=PL2UoJXK3rrpequLFAIi162j8fjOlxK6iE&pp=iAQB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYyTo0ex76Q&list=PL2UoJXK3rr... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmGd-cx-dXc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmGd-cx-dXc It’s on Twitch: https://m.twitch.tv/retroweatherchannel?desktop-redirect=true https://m.twitch.tv/retroweatherchannel?desktop-redirect=tru... There’s a nice Spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0WEViIh23PGbLqGbjYNAZz https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0WEViIh23PGbLqGbjYNAZz And the site dedicated to it mentioned earlier in the thread has some recordings: https://twcclassics.com/ https://twcclassics.com/
- insaneirish 1y ago> Importantly, it also plays Weather Channel-esque background music. Which has its own sort of funny subculture. One is Phish fans unexpectedly hearing what was decidedly not publicly common music being aired on the Weather Channel: https://jambands.com/features/2002/07/24/guyute-and-your-local-forecast-the-story-behind-phish-on-the-weather-channel/ https://jambands.com/features/2002/07/24/guyute-and-your-loc... Fast forward 20ish years and a similar thing happened with Fox Sports interludes: https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/12/17/fox-producer-who-got-the-nfl-to-jam https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/12/17/fox-producer-who-got-the-n...
- CursedSilicon 1y agoIf it's the same one that brings the equipment to Retro Computing events. He sadly has declined to publish any kind of archive of the software for other hobbyists :( I understand that he's under no obligation to do so. But a lot of us worry that if the hard disks die or if he loses interest in the hobby, that software will be irrevocably lost for all of us
- Maxious 1y agoThe youtube stream has a link in the description for EEPROM dumps https://hackaday.io/project/178144-reverse-engineering-the-weather-star-4000 https://hackaday.io/project/178144-reverse-engineering-the-w...
- CursedSilicon 1y agoThere's some that runs specifically on SGI machines to do the TV graphics that has not been dumped afaik
- genewitch 1y agoI refuse to be nerd sniped; do you know what the input to the SGI is and what it outputs? looking at the video it seems that most of that is done "in hardware", the SGI could just be providing the actual updated information, and it could just be for nostalgia or "if it is not broke..."
- CursedSilicon 1y agohttps://www.twcarchive.com/wiki/Weather_Star_XL https://www.twcarchive.com/wiki/Weather_Star_XL Modified SGI O2 in a rackable form-factor
- exikyut 1y agoI didn't even realize I wasn't reading Wikipedia for the first couple minutes.
- KurSix 1y agoKind of wild how much of that era's tech was ephemeral
- mgr86 1y agoInteresting project thanks for sharing. I've casually tried to track down a voice in weather from that time with no luck, but this project scratches the itch somewhat. When I was younger (late 90s-early 00's) I spent a fair amount of my summers fishing with my father and brother on Lake Ontario. We would occasionally turn on the radio and catch a weather report from the coast guard/noaa. There was something about that then out-dated computer generated voice delivering the weather succinctly and to the point. It was actually a project I used to evaluate coding done by an LLM. It was mediocre and took way too many iterations. But I now have a keyboard shortcut that will fetch KML/XML from noaa, parse out my important details, and read it back to me. The voice isn't quite right. But the morning I spent working on that was a good distraction at the time.