Rome and IUPUI

In order to give Rome's Revolution as much verisimilitude as possible (despite the fact that it takes place in the 35th century), I have drawn what I could from my actual life experience.

A while back, in 1982 in fact, my Father and I were called upon to "rescue" the Natatorium at the Indiana University/Purdue University campus at Indianapolis (IUPUI). Here is a picture of the Natatorium today:



The previous contractor had built the scoreboard (not the one in the picture above) but, because of a dispute, had left the job and taken his scoreboard controller with him. My father and I were tasked with job of "cracking the code" to drive the scoreboard and finish up the system.

Without really knowing anything about the control sequences, I wrote a brute force program that went through every possible permutation of codes and in a matter of minutes, the scoreboard lit up and reflected a series of symbols that marched across the screen. I quickly narrowed down the control sequence to harness it for the swim meet control system but everyone who saw my initial hack loved the boot-up procedure so much they actually insisted we keep it in. Oh well, it was their money. So I did. I always enjoyed that time so when Rome had to reboot her nav-computer, I invoked the ghost of the IUPUI Natatorium scoreboard as my inspiration.

Here is the scene where I replicated that experience:

“We shut it down,” Rome said. She bent over and removed a panel built into the control console. She felt around until she found an interlock. She pulled it and the viewscreens went dark. Immediately, the plasma thrusters shut down. Rome waited about ten seconds then reset the switch. The viewscreens came back on and showed a steady march of diagnostic symbols indicating startup.

Writing that scene brought back fond memories of an artifact that gave people joy.