Here’s why the best IMAX movies still need a Palm Pilot to work
Here’s why the best IMAX movies still need a Palm Pilot to work
It takes a surprising amount of really old tech to show you brand-new movies.
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Why?
Its job is to keep the QTRU moving at a consistent speed and to help keep the film’s video in sync with its audio.
Why emulate a piece of 20yr old PalmPilot software instead of writing a new one?
the answer is simple: it works. And it’s not like it’s a booming industry in need of reinvention. There are only 30 theaters worldwide that can even show a full 70mm print like Oppenheimer, 19 of them in the US. Most IMAX experiences are digital now,
Because nobody bothered to write the same software for more modern hardware. As long as it works, there’s no urgent need to upgrade. Eventually, it’s going to become hard to find hardware that can still run your ancient software, so at that point they’ll probably replace the whole things with a raspberry pi or something.
They’ve already replaced the hardware. The article shows a Palm Pilot emulator running on an iPad now.
The server it talks to was probably always some type of Linux box.
Oh they decided to emulated it then. Pretty neat. If it ain't broken, don't fix it. If you can kick the can down the road, go for it. Why do anything today that can also be ignored tomorrow.
I have a seen a lot of systems where the interface is some ancient text-based thing running in a virtual machine on a random modern(ish) PC. I guess the funny thing here is that they even included a static photo of the physical device framing the emulated display so it would be more obviously a continuation. Maybe that's just a function of whatever emulator they adapted, but it's interesting.
I’ve seen an electronics assembly line where some board testers were made for various operating systems such as DOS, Windows 3.11, Windows 95, W98, W2000 and XP. Yes, they still had examples of each of these in production use. Due to security concerns, they just had to make a dedicated isolated network that allowed the testers to still save the results somewhere.
Some tester hardware required the LPT port, and they had some issues finding computers that still had one. Sure, you can use a USB adapter, but some testers just didn’t work correctly when the signal had to go through an adapter, so they literally had no choice but to use an authentic ancient computer built in the LPT era.
When you open that door, you may also need to use one of those ancient 1GB hard disks because the motherboard didn’t have any SATA ports. If a computer like that has any issues at all with any hardware parts, you’re usually in big trouble because finding replacement parts is not as easy as it once was. Eventually you have to ask yourself, how much does it cost to rebuild the entire production line out of modern parts and how much does it cost to kick the can down the road.
As the article says- because it just works.
But say just for examples sake we didn’t read the article - what would a quick summary of why exactly palm pilots are relevant to iMax entail?
It takes two paragraphs to explain it in the article because IMAX is really complicated. The important thing is that it's mainly a monitoring device and projectionists usually just have to leave it alone and let it do its thing.
Cool, actually very interesting. Thanks for the summary!
Instead of waiting ten minutes for someone else to retype the information for you, you could read the two small groups of words and found out immediately! It's magic
The article doesn't actually say what is does, just that it's function is to ensure the loading of film occurs at a constant speed which, it is implied, keeps the audio in sync. It doesn't say how it does it, how it's connected, or whether it has a true control function or is just a monitoring device which is used by the projectionist to make alterations (using another part of the system) should the operation de-sync. The only operator they talked to claims to neve have interacted with the device.
Thank you, that is a very concise ELI5-style explanation of the original “if it ain’t broke” summation.
