Dortmund Hauptbahnhof computer dies

From WDR.de
Translated version by google WDR.de translated

Computer breakdown in the main station Stand vom 18.02.2005
Over 20 Jahre it provided perfectly its service. But two days ago the computer Schaetzchen, which steers the indicating panels in the Dortmunder main station, gave its spirit up.



It seems that the Dortmund train station was using a Commodore 64 (not even a 128!) to control the track switching and train schedules. Now that the computer has died they estimate 3 million euros to replace it with a better system. They probably won't because the station gets renovated in 2 years and the building will get leveled- so why bother. For now, they are relying on "eyes and ears" to keep the trains from colliding and to keep passengers on scheduled departures.

This story has sooo many shades of German Stereotypical Wrongness I don't know where to begin.

It could have been that the station night watchman was playing too many hours of Legacy of the Ancients.
That game had so many bugs.

maybe 3 Lions can donate his Atari games consol to the Bahnhof. Its from the same era, maybe it could do the job as well.

You can pick up a C64 for next to nothing on Ebay, why spend 3mil if it was working ok. Class computer, kicks all this PC shit in to touch.

Bring back 64K memory and 20minute loading times. Bliss!!

Why don't they just bid on this great unit?

Current bid is $122... actually I had one of these... might bid on it just for old times sake.

Loved the C-64... more stuff than an Apple II and only $199... I miss the 6502 processor

Lmao, VINTAGE! Oh the good old days of swinger "Leisure Suit Larry" ... ha ha!

My fav is the ADAM computer by Collecovision...it's actually on ebay!! Sweet! We used to have one...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...bayphotohosting

Keyboards and screens are for wussies.. Now the Altair was a true vintage classic..

Not to go too far off topic but the FAA air traffic control systems were pretty low power as well (by modern standards)... IBM 3083s...

My cell phone could run laps around a 3083.

Ah... back in my day the things we could do with a couple o' K of RAM... these kids today with their bloatware need a 256 MB just to get "Hello World" going.

Yeah baby the Altair... the system that launched Microsoft. And don't forget about the IMSI 8080 or Poly 88.

I miss the blinking lights and booting via the front panel!

Anyone also remember the TTY terminals that were all gears and made about 120db of noise as they printout out at about 110 baud? Let's see ya browse the web on those babies!

Because the story isn't true?

(If somedody ever reads this old stuff)

hi profundo,

today I incidentally stumbled on this topic. A commodore 64 still active in these days? I was really amazed about it. It would have been exactly what I'm still thinking about german DB! But could it be real? Fortunately You left a link to the original message. To keep it short: It turns out to be no commodore 64, but an intel 286 unix machine. The "3 millions" have to be calculated for a completely new display panel system, not only the "new" (old) computer.
Reading this in te original article I was somehow relaxed, on the other hand: the faked/ incorrect news fits much better to my view of the DB.
What made me finally answering to this old thread, was Your conclusion about Your image of germany. Can You tell me more about it? I read a book 2 months ago named "planet germany" which deals with german image in the (american) world. maybe somebody knows about it.

Joachim

why yes, somebody does. Fabulous book. Except I'd say it's more about what Germans think of themselves -- and what they should think of themselves.