Post #2350587
2026-02-25 07:10 UTC
There are three main modern tools you can use, versus the old days: You have a radar system, you have a speed log, and you have GPS.
All of those tools have serial outputs on them, good ol' RS-232.
So here was the concept: take a PC and make a custom "ice breaking" UI, taking input from the three devices, and rendering it in such a fashion that the icebreaker skipper could get all the info in one place.
Replies (1)
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@GeePawHill@mastodon.social 2026-02-25 07:14
And I was sub-contracted to do that. It was about a six month long project. I wrote an entire windowing system on top of DOS to use VGA to show the display. (I'm a good fucking programmer, and that's not the only time I've written a graphical UI from scratch.) And. A comical note: about six weeks before the project was due, my hard drive died. And. My backup drive died. All I had were some two-month old printouts.