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Commodore PC Still Controls Heat and A/C At 19 Michigan Public Schools
jmulvey writes: Think your SCADA systems are outdated? Environmental monitoring at 19 Grand Rapids Public Schools are still controlled by a Commodore Amiga. Programmed by a High School student in the 1980s, the system has been running 24/7 for decades. A replacement has been budgeted by the school system, estimated cost: Between $1.5 and 2 million. How much is your old Commodore Amiga worth?
So less than 2 dozen schools need to spend upwards of $2 million dollars to... control the HVAC?
Really?
That is the bigger issue, IMHO...
Yeah. You could probably replace the thing with a raspberry pi .... at each location ... with a custom controller card.. and another one to control them all... for about $5,000
$2M ? Someone's pork barrel overfloweth.
Environmental control and monitoring becomes complicated when you're considering large buildings. At that size you need a system that controls how much your heat plant or cooling system is producing, as well as controlling fans and baffles to ensure that the cooking classroom, with a dozen ovens operating(or 30 computers) on the 3rd floor of the sunny side of the building stays comfortably cool while the the traditional English room on the shaded side of the first floor doesn't actually freeze.
The reason it's $2M is the amount of programming and equipment replacement necessary, standard government waste, and the fact that they're no longer willing to let students/staff do it.
I don't read AC A human right
It IS a PC, as in the generic sense of "personal computer". A Mac is a "PC" too. . .
So anyone who can write a program for that platform that is still running problem-free after 30 years deserves to be making stacks of cash in the embedded/IoT space.
Also, shameless plug: http://amiga30.com/
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
If they are only having problems with the hardware, why not just put an Amiga emulator on a new computer?
Popisms.com - Connecting pop culture
I'm not 100% sure it's governmental pork... commercial HVAC control systems can get hella expensive in a hurry, depending on what you're putting in. I suspect it's going to be more than just dropping in a new PC/server/whatever... a buttload of updated sensors and control equipment will likely have to go in along with it (esp. given the age).
Price it sometime, then scale that cost up for 19 large buildings. $2m comes to roughly $105k per school; as far as buildings of that size go, that ain't half bad.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I love that a 30 year old computer is doing the job just fine.
I love that a kid wrote the code ages ago, and presumably it has never even been patched.
I love that the Amiga was so damn rock solid that it has not had an emergent failure in 30 years.
I love that it uses walkie talkie beeps as a protocol
I love that somehow it is going to cost 2 million dollars to reproduce something a kid did in his spare time, presumably simply for the privilege of getting to play with a $1300 dollar computer.
And what do you do if a part dies? Where are you going to get parts for something that has not been manufactured for 20+ years?
Obviously it needs to be replaced just so you can have something that can be repaired. The $2mil probably includes upgrading a large part of the HVAC system. If you have a 20+ year old computer controlling the HVAC, then you probably have a 20+ old HVAC.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Environmental control and monitoring becomes complicated when you're considering large buildings.
And yet a high-school student from the 1980's was able to engineer a system with off the shelf computers and a little ingenuity. And managed to build a system that has lasted for 25 years.
"PC comes from "IBM PC"."
No, it doesn't. It was in use before there was an IBM PC, along with "personal computer" and "microcomputer." History proves you wrong.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Pi plus some student programmers - should be done for $1500. Which begs the question - if it still works, why replace it?
In my old house, there was an analog thermostat.
This thermostat came with the house, probably cost $20, and worked just fine.
Me, being the foolhardy spendthrift I am, dropped TEN TIMES that on a fancy-shmancy programmable thing with all sorts of stupid, complicated bits inside.
As it turns out, my previous model--while perfectly functional--was really quite inefficient, and the new unit had pretty much paid for itself within a few weeks.
Doing things properly can save tons of money.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
The problem is that the equipment at the 19 buildings is all built to use some kind of radio modem. Apparently retrofitting that equipment to use some more modern means of communication is going to be costly. They've tried to do it before and simply couldn't get around the requirement to continue using those radio modems. The radio modems are the heart of why it needs to be upgraded because they are prone to interference, for example the walkie talkies the staff use interfere and cause the system to not function properly. This equipment is all much older than the Amiga, which it's self was a replacement for another central control unit that was decommissioned because replacement parts were getting to expensive. The Amiga was a good fit because it was actually able to interface with a compatible radio modem.
I do the IT for schools.
The largest, most complex heating system I've ever seen is a bunch of thermostats, pumps, temperature sensors and boiler start-up times in a piece of crappy HTML running on a boiler control system which costs 1% of what the heating system cost (and most of that shit is software licensing and support, not programming).
Seriously, it gives a nice diagram with all the in and out temperatures for multiple boilers, spread over the entire site, with temperature reading for other places (including external), and a "program" (really just a table of values) for when to start up in the morning depending on what the outside temperature is and/or whether the system's water temperature is ramping up as normal in that area.
Honestly, the control part is fucking simple. It's not so simple to have something controlling 30-year-old systems that still running on a 30-year-old system, but the actual job it's doing is pretty minimal.
A modern system might run proper cabling to / wireless sensors that don't interfere but would basically be the same thing. More likely, the system is just being replaced completely, including the majority of the HVAC equipment (or at least the centralised units if not the ducts / outlets / radiators / whatever).
In all the schools I've ever worked there are rooms full of boilers all over that cost millions. Usually they are run from a control panel with a tiny microprocessor and - if you're lucky - some kind of serial or Ethernet controller somewhere.
The hard part is not the software, or the schedules, or the algorithms involved, it's keeping the system running and integrating the parts you want to work with the system you want. Boiler manufacturers on that scale tend to want you to buy their controllers, and won't play well with anything else without a huge premium on the hardware.
You're also going to need some way to keep the kids from screwing with them.
When I was in school the sure fire way to get us to mess with something like a thermostat was to put a lock of some kind on it. It was usually the threat of meeting with the "The Board of Education" that kept us in line. "The Board of Education" was very similar to a cricket bat with holes drilled in it that our principal kept on the wall behind his desk, which was labeled, "The Board of Education" in bright red outlined in black.
I'm guessing that between Ritalin and the constant distraction of cell phones, things like thermostats really wouldn't be noticed by students today.
My seventh grade Apple II teacher in 1983 called my Commodore VIC-20 a toy in front of the class. That's when I learned that I came from a "poor" family because we couldn't afford an Apple II. My parents got me a Commodore 64 the following year. I went through three C64 in the next ten years. My first PC after college was literally an old IBM PC/AT (286) that a roommate brought home work in 1995.
I think it is PC to call all PC's PC
The original programmer is still around, and occasionally does some maintenance on the programmer -- he even comments extensively in the comment section for the linked news story about the specific challenges they face. (He's "Jeff").
The $2MM will be used for a general upgrade of all the heating/cooling facilities, which will include more modern control systems. Many of the systems that used to be controlled by the Amiga have already been replaced, and the Amiga doesn't manage those any more :)
I used to work for an HVAC controls company. Most controls contractors have a specialty, whether it be hospitals, schools, commercial offices, or whatever. The one I worked for specialized in schools. We would typically get the entire school district's business all at once, but individual buildings would be upgraded or added to over time. But occasionally, we would get a large project that involved multiple buildings or an entire take-over of a whole district's HVAC controls.
I have personally seen, held, and deposited a check for over $1 million from one such project. And that was the 20% kick-off payment. We outfitted 11 schools with complete direct-digital controls (none of that old pneumatic stuff), a web-facing control server, and a bunch of wire-runs to connect it all together. The price (as you may have calculated) was around $5 million. This was 10+ years ago, too.
That project covered a high school, 2 middle schools, and 8 elementary schools. The district administration offices were on the high school campus as well, and were part of the same system that covered the high school building itself.
The high school had (from memory):
- 300+ fan powered terminals (zone controller and thermostat for each)
- 7 or 8 air handling units (multi-program controller for each)
- 12 roof-top units (single-program controller for each)
- 1 network bridge
- 1 web-facing server
The middle schools had:
- 150 FPT zones (average)
- 3 or 4 AHU's each
- 6-8 RTU's each
- 1 network bridge each
The elementary schools had:
- 50 FPT zones (average)
- 1 or 2 AHU's each
- 3 or 4 RTU's each
- 1 network bridge each
All told, parts for that project cost us around $2-to-2.5 million. We generally bid things with a 100% markup over parts costs, which covered labor, design, documentation, management, and everything else. This company was and is profitable, but isn't making anyone wildly rich.
There is no pork in that barrel. It just costs money to build something like that.
When the Amiga system originally went in it was controlling well over 100 buildings throughout the district, including the entire GRCC campus at the time. The Amiga replaced the head-end of the system, which was experiencing expensive hardware failures every year ... and you couldn't get parts for that mini-computer on e-bay. It is essentially acting as a huge database (schedules, configurations, control programs, history, etc.), system manager, and monitoring system ("head-end") for the remaining 19 buildings HVAC systems. If the Amiga goes down, the buildings will continue to operate using the configurations last received, with most of the individual device controls being able to be manually overridden inside each building, albeit with less energy efficiency. What you will loose is the ability to change schedules/custom control code/configurations and the ability to centrally monitor the performance of the buildings.
Each building has one or more local control systems, and those systems communicate back to the central head-end over radio-modem (there was no district-wide network back then). Schedule and other control changes are sent to the buildings and alerts/reports are sent back. That old equipment in the buildings, even older than the Amiga, is what dictates the radio communications link. They incorporate specific protocols for keying up the radio that are not directly compatible with a newer serial to Ethernet type device that would seem like a logical replacement.
The control systems themselves gather temperatures, both inside and outside the building, look at trends and do predictive control of the equipment to accomodate scheduled use of various areas of each building. For the day, this was very advanced building control and offered significant energy savings, as well as comfort in the buildings.
Over time, as buildings have been updated, sold or replaced, the local controls withing those buildings have been replaced with newer/more modern controls that communicate with newer central control systems. Replacing these controls that are local to the buildings is what is responsible for the majority of the cost I would say.
As far as the Amiga system itself, I believe most of the components are still the original. The hard drive may have failed twice over the years, requiring a rebuild from backups. They did pick up or have donated a few Amiga systems to use as parts as needed, but the system has proven to be very resilient. Obviously, Monitors, Keyboards and Mice can only take so much use without needing to be replaced. Without this, the system likely would have become inoperable and unservicable many years ago, or been incredibly expensive to keep running.
From a technical stand point, the Amiga was selected because at the time it was the only "Personal Computer" (PC) that had a true pre-emptive multi-taskng operating system. It needed to be able to handle multiple processes simultaneously, including interfacing with the systems, maintaining settings in the database, monitoring the system as well as support for both local and remote access to the system simultaneously. Basically, its capabilities fit the need. While for nostalgia reasons I would hate to see it go, it has been 30 years and I think the system has done its job. Replacing a building's control system doesn't happen overnight, and when you are talking 19 buildings with ancient (yes I am calling myself ancient I guess) control systems, it is going to take money and time. The payback in energy savings, comfort and safe control of the buildings though I think justifies the cost.
Have a Day!
I still have two Amigas (500 and 1200). IM me and you can have both of them for just $500K - that's a savings of $1M over your upgrade costs! /snark>
How the bloody hell did you go through *three* of them? I only had one, and it lasted until I gave it away many years later.
You could murder someone with a Commodore 64 after fishing it out of a swimming pool filled with beer and it would still run fine.
You could murder someone with a Commodore 64 after fishing it out of a swimming pool filled with beer and it would still run fine.
Yes, after you replaced the power supply.
>a classmate posting something questioning the pre-emptive multitasking capabilities of AmigaOS
Yes. The Amiga ran on a 68000. The 68000 didn't support instruction restart. So you couldn't properly do preemptive multitasking with it. It needed the applications to cooperate with the interruptions. So an application could undermine the preemption. The 68010 fixed this problem. There were also unix based 68000 workstations that had two 68000s, one running a clock cycle behind the other, so the state of the CPU could be rewound and the instruction restarted when necessary.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
"Yeah, you're just going to have to sit in the sweltering heat during summer school until ThunderfuckThor69 sends us the PSU we need for a 30 year old computer made by a company very few of you have ever heard of."
Yeah, that'd go over well with me as a kid. Or my parents.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
o one referred to "Personal Computer" at the time with uppercase letters except when it was part of the computer's name (upper case makes it a proper noun). As an acronym, I don't recall "PC" ever being used to describe the generic class of microcomputers.
I don't know where you lived, but we used "PC" that way consistently. No one had a IBM PC in high school: our PCs were C64s, Amigas, Ataris, and the one lucky guy who could afford a Mac. We never needed a word for "IBM PC clone" as non of us had one.
Maybe it's regional, like the whole "what kind of coke would you like" thing.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You drone on about "history". Meanwhile, many of us LIVED through those years and yes indeed most of us non-kludge clone users would have viewed the branding of our chosen alternative as an INSULT.
Commie users certainly would have viewed their machine being called a "PC" as an insult. PCs were a brand associated with IBM and later Microsoft. It represented the ultimate in crapulence unworthy success.
I don't think DOS users in those days would have been happy to have their machines lumped in with Apples or Ataris either.
The generic non-brand terms were "home computer" and "microcomputer".
Some of us actually lived this shit and aren't just regurgitating bad wikipedia articles.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Because if it does break I'm not confident the vendor can get a replacement Commodore 64 out and installed in 24 hours.
There's a concept called "end-of-life" and it does not mean when the equipment finally dies.
Then you must have lived on Mars or something.
As someone who attended Atari user's group meetings as a kid, I can tell you first-hand that people got pretty annoyed and quickly corrected you if you referred to our machines as PC's. PC's were expensive boring turds that none of us wanted. Personal computer was acceptable. PC referred to IBM crap or a clone later on.
Couldn't take the three additional characters to write "Commodore Amiga"?
Yes, I know, the Amiga is technically a "PC", but since Commodore did actually release a line of PC clones that were actually branded "Commodore PC", I consider the headline inaccurate.
FC Closer
Did the sprites render faster after that?
emt 377 emt 4
When I was in school, our A/C was regulated by an electric tea kettle, that we placed underneath the thermostat in order to trick it into keeping the room at a temperature below "Shake 'n Bake"
Which begs the question - if it still works, why replace it?
It raises the question. Begging the question means something completely different.
No. Begging the question DOES mean raising the question.
Here's the thing: words and phrases can mean different things depending on the context. "Begs the question", when followed by a question means raises the question. "Begs the question" when talking about an argument means the obscure and antiquated English mis-translation of the older Latin mis-translation of the Greek phrase.
I suggest that you give it a rest. You're fighting the same losing battle that was fought over "gay" and "hacker". You won't change the public's mind, so the best outcome you'll ever get is looking like a pompous blow-hard. So, if that's what you're after, then have at it. Otherwise, learn to shut your trap and roll with it.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!