Lotus Signal (hardware device to grab stock prices over FM sideband)
I was looking at the news and see that the Dow Jones was down 1000 points. Brough back memories of Black Monday https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/stock-market-crash-of-1987 October 19, 1987 We were selling a device called a Lotus Signal From https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-09-13-fi-22723-story.html "The Cambridge, Mass.-based computer software company, diversifying to escape its dependence on the popular software program 1-2-3, said buyers of Signal will be able to get financial information through a unique radio receiver and store it in a personal computer. Signal will cost $595 plus a monthly subscription fee of $125, which Lotus said is about one-fifth what it costs to get such information over leased telephone lines. The company said it will start shipping Signal on Oct. 1." We had it set up in our ComputerLand showroom. There was a bug in the software - It was unable to cope with a triple digit change in a securities price (That day the Dow dropped 508 points. I think I have one in inventory. Anyone up for building a FM transmitter t make our Lotus Signal work again? Bob Roswell broswell@syssrc.com 410-771-5544 ext 4336 Computer Museum Highlights<http://museum.syssrc.com/> [cid:image001.jpg@01DAE728.D14DDCE0]
Very interesting concept for the time. I'd love to see the data format and transmission protocol, and also see if there was any protection against receiving false information from a bad actor wanting to manipulate markets. On Mon, Aug 5, 2024 at 11:21 AM Bob Roswell via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
I was looking at the news and see that the Dow Jones was down 1000 points.
Brough back memories of Black Monday https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/stock-market-crash-of-1987 October 19, 1987
We were selling a device called a Lotus Signal From https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-09-13-fi-22723-story.html
"The Cambridge, Mass.-based computer software company, diversifying to escape its dependence on the popular software program 1-2-3, said buyers of Signal will be able to get financial information through a unique radio receiver and store it in a personal computer. Signal will cost $595 plus a monthly subscription fee of $125, which Lotus said is about one-fifth what it costs to get such information over leased telephone lines. The company said it will start shipping Signal on Oct. 1."
We had it set up in our ComputerLand showroom. There was a bug in the software - It was unable to cope with a triple digit change in a securities price (That day the Dow dropped 508 points.
I think I have one in inventory. Anyone up for building a FM transmitter t make our Lotus Signal work again?
Bob Roswell broswell@syssrc.com 410-771-5544 ext 4336
Computer Museum Highlights<http://museum.syssrc.com/>
[cid:image001.jpg@01DAE728.D14DDCE0]
On 8/5/24 11:21, Bob Roswell via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I think I have one in inventory. Anyone up for building a FM transmitter t make our Lotus Signal work again?
Sound like it didn't work the first time. ;-) Sorry couldn't resist. The ARRL was just dealing with similar plans from someone who wanted to park their signals right up against a ARRL bands. It got shot down as it was a terrible implementation. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry kd2zrq@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies KD2ZRQ
On 8/5/2024 11:21 AM, Bob Roswell via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I think I have one in inventory. Anyone up for building a FM transmitter t make our Lotus Signal work again? That likely would have been an SCA signal piggybacked on an FM broadcast signal.
See: * https://patents.google.com/patent/US3387268A/en * https://libraryarchives.metro.net/dpgtl/trafficplans/1989-smart-corridor-pro... page 188
There were some interesting competing products around that time which used datacasting over Vertical Blanking Interval in the PBS television signal. You subscribe to the service, and they would send you a box which you hooked to your incoming cable feed, and it did the VBI extraction and provided it to a DOS application running on the computer for display. I wish I could remember the name of the company, but at the time I thought it was pretty interesting. Devin On Mon, Aug 5, 2024 at 8:34 PM Martin A. Flynn via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On 8/5/2024 11:21 AM, Bob Roswell via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I think I have one in inventory. Anyone up for building a FM transmitter t make our Lotus Signal work again? That likely would have been an SCA signal piggybacked on an FM broadcast signal.
See:
* https://patents.google.com/patent/US3387268A/en * https://libraryarchives.metro.net/dpgtl/trafficplans/1989-smart-corridor-pro... page 188
Can you say “Teletext”? I still have a couple of Zenith digital televisions that can receive that signal, if available. Sent from: My extremely complicated, hand held electronic device.
On Aug 6, 2024, at 12:27 PM, Devin Heitmueller via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
There were some interesting competing products around that time which used datacasting over Vertical Blanking Interval in the PBS television signal. You subscribe to the service, and they would send you a box which you hooked to your incoming cable feed, and it did the VBI extraction and provided it to a DOS application running on the computer for display. I wish I could remember the name of the company, but at the time I thought it was pretty interesting.
Devin
On Mon, Aug 5, 2024 at 8:34 PM Martin A. Flynn via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On 8/5/2024 11:21 AM, Bob Roswell via vcf-midatlantic wrote: I think I have one in inventory. Anyone up for building a FM transmitter t make our Lotus Signal work again? That likely would have been an SCA signal piggybacked on an FM broadcast signal.
See:
* https://patents.google.com/patent/US3387268A/en * https://libraryarchives.metro.net/dpgtl/trafficplans/1989-smart-corridor-pro... page 188
On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 1:58 PM Sentrytv <sentrytv@yahoo.com> wrote:
Can you say “Teletext”?
Yeah, I know Teletext well. Over the years I did a ton of work on the Linux kernel to support receiving VBI for various USB/PCI TV tuners (including Teletext). I doubt it was Teletext in this specific case though. Teletext generally breaks down the content into "pages" and you have minimal control over how they are displayed. In this case, the DOS application lets you pick specifically which stock quotes to display/monitor, and thus the data was in some structured format but unlikely to be organized into pages by the headend. Devin
participants (6)
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Bob Roswell -
Dean Notarnicola -
Devin Heitmueller -
Martin A. Flynn -
Neil Cherry -
Sentrytv