I used to know a chap who liked to tell about how he took one of the worst support calls ever.<p>He worked for a company that did industrial control systems and he was in the office by himself one weekend and the phone kept ringing - apparently they had strict instructions <i>not</i> to answer the phone but he did it anyway.<p>On the other end of the line was an irate operator at the Hunsterson nuclear power plant who said something like "I'm standing on top of Reactor B and all your systems have gone down and we can't see what the f*ck is going on and what are you going to do to fix it".<p>Apparently there was a standard support line but the operator had decided to pick on the name of the company displayed somewhere in the software and look them up in the phone book (this was about 1990) and shout at someone.<p>It turned out to be nothing to do with the systems this chaps employer was responsible for - they just got the call because their name was visible!
I've been wanting to get a modern web based reactor simulator going for years. I have noodled on it a bit but not made much progress beyond a bad-UI core neutronic simulator. It just hasn't bubbled to the top of my stack yet. Someday.<p><a href="https://github.com/whatisnuclear/simulator">https://github.com/whatisnuclear/simulator</a>
When I saw his simulation on the display it reminded me of a nuke plant simulator I had on the Atari way back in the day. I believe it's this one here: <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scram_(video_game)" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scram_(video_game)</a> which had its source code released here: <a href="http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/source-code/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/source-code/index.html</a>
Brilliant video and software.<p>I remember using something very similar on a BBC Micro. I don't think it was so detailed (but it did have colours!).
I'm impressed about how sharp the video output of the ZX-81 is here. Original is so wobbly and fuzzy. I suppose he is using some video output converter. That character set, bring back some good childhood memories of learning BASIC with 1Kb of RAM.
Cute simulation and good commentary. Obviously nobody would seriously consider using non-redundant commercial hardware like this in an environment with great risk to humanity and the environment. I do recall being amused when (in 1982) I learned that NASA had begun using Tandy Radio Shack Color Computers for telemetry displays. I think Tandy missed out on a marketing (or at least an advertising) opportunity. It could be that they never found out about it.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Color_Computer" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Color_Computer</a>