Australian Cityrail Amigas

[Beakster]

Yo,

Don't know if anyone has ever heard about this before so thought I'd post it.

I just found a website about the railway announcement system used for Sydney Australia..  System is built around A1200 & A600.  Can't find any pics of the A1200, but there is a website of the A600 here:

http://www.netspace.net.au/~entom/Micromate-1.html

You can listen to some of the samles here:

http://www.railpage.org.au/railwavs/amigapage/

Doesnt use narator.library, seems to have a built in HD with all the required smaples on it.  A built in LCD screen provides any required visual output.  Operators manually enter the code for the required speech.

 :-)

[Bodie]

All aboard, next destination Guru Meditation  :-) .

[Dan]

It´s this sort of thing the amiga is perfect for.
Scala and a couple of amigas is the perfect way to run any information displays.
It looks so fun when the train departure monitors shows windows bluescreen of death. :-)
Sadly, today Scala is a accounting program for PC.
I never understood why the real scala didnt sue them back in the early 90s.

[tonyw]

Hmmm, only last year I was on Central station in Sydney and I saw all the monitors go out. Then followed a 5-minute period of BIOS screens and script files (not silent), while Windows NT rebooted about three times. It was a real giggle.

tony

[YttriumOx]

Reading that page, you'll notice the following:

CityRail entered the digital announcement era with the introduction of "Amiga". This basic code driven system which received its sound files from the then cartridge tape announcement system, made its way across the suburbs of Sydney. Characteristics of Amiga were its higher chime and a more 'cut and paste' sound than the replacement DVA. In the first half of 2000 the few remaining Amiga stations such as Penshurst and Belmore received their more modern version of digital announcements sadly bringing Amiga's days to a close.

Which is a shame, since I live in Chatswood and was about to run down to the station to check it out...

Regards,
Yttrium Oxide
AKA Ben de Waal
(posting from Mozilla 1.4b on an AmigaOne G3XE)

[Milhous2]

Yes Queensland Railways have been using Amigas for their realtime displays for ages. Started with Amiga600HD's and now A1200HD's. I bought a 2nd hand A600HD from QR! I have worked around South Brisbane where you find them driving CCTV systems in Venues such as the Convention Centre even, so it doesn't just apply to the CCTV systems on Railway Platforms!.

[LP]

Nice...

At my old Buisness Collage they used an A1200 and scala to post messages on info-panels all over the school... Up until 2001 I've only seen 1 amigaDOS screen on the panels, in my 3 year period as a student there... They unfortunetly went over to a PC with Scala in 2002... And guess what? -I saw the nice blue screen 2 times a week that year... Kind of scared me a bit :-)

[prowler]

When I used to work at Chatswood a few years ago it had the Amiga announcement system then. They got rid of it a few years ago. It was pretty cool to see a Amiga in the station office when going to work in the morning

[vortexau]

The very first Public Amiga-run display that I witnessed, was at Brisbane's EXPO '88. . . . .

A hospitals' animation of human circulatory system. That may have been a few months before I bought my A500!!! :-)