They reprogrammed a 47-year-old computer system with 68k of memory across a 22+ hour lag
The most impressive thing was being able to anticipate the "click OK to continue" actions 22 hours in advance.
Over a 16-bit-per-second connection.
If you have not seen it I thoroughly recommend the fantastic doco on the Voyager Program "The Farthest" youtu.be/znTdk_de_K8?...
It is one of humankind's greatest achievements. More than 12 billion miles away a tiny spaceship is leaving our Solar System and entering the void of deep sp...
they had a clear sightline
It's absolutely amazing that a computer that predates home PCs is out there, in temperature extremes and radiation, bopping along looking at things beyond our solar system, and we can still talk to it. Let alone hear back or FIX it. Like dang. My thermostat probably has more memory.
Reading between the lines, a lot of hard-coded pointer excitement. 🥴🤣
In college the students taking Ada had to work with an emulator that ran in batch mode with no I/O, only a final status indicator for Success or Failure.
not that big a deal. they had 'Clippy' to help