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A project log for Bar of Soap Satellite Tracker

I'm going to squeeze a Commodore C64 satellite tracking system from 1987 into something the size of a bar of soap

thestumblerTheStumbler 11/18/2020 at 22:560 Comments

My initial enthusiasm upon discovering the stash of old units has been dampened by a sudden and unfortunate memory. While I'm not 100% sure, I think the programs were distributed in a compiled format (there were two programs, one for satellites, and another one just for terrestrial antenna pointing based on the remote station's radio callsign prefix). I don't think this was done for copy-prevention reasons, but rather program speed. My recollection is vague, but I think we discovered that the compiled program ran faster and/or loaded faster. With normal languages, that makes sense, but I'm not sure how Basic was compiled. 

Regardless, I will proceed and try to get the floppy images extracted to a more modern media for analysis. And continue racking my brain and see if I can come up with any place to look where the source code might be stored.

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