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A project log for Reverse Engineering The Weather STAR 4000

The Weather STAR 4000: A Journey of reverse engineering the hardware to an iconic machine of the 1980s/90s.

techknighttechknight 03/09/2021 at 23:310 Comments

So eventually I had to build my netlist on the graphics card, the CPU card, and all the other cards. 

By the end of this, I was literally ready to go jump off a bridge. I had soaked up months and months of time into all of this. And this excludes work hours of course as I still have my day job. 

I ended up doing the graphics card first, then working out reverse engineering it first. Once I had the graphics card done, I went back and did the rest a month or two later. 

Eventually its all worth it in the end as the journey continues. It is a necessary evil if you wish to develop on a bespoke system that has ZERO documentation anywhere. (outside TWCs own archives). 

After all that work, you end up with the rewards: 

Graphics

CPU:

I/O:

And by the time I got to the data card, I said screw it. I was done! I intended on replacing the data card with my own design, but we will get to that later. I documented just enough so I could figure out what to do with it. 

Whew..... Well that's done! or... is it? 

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