Well, its a collaboration of a few guys including myself. This STAR and its data is remotely managed just as if TWC would have done it, so I have it setup as a "set it and forget it" style. So now it operates as a self-contained unit. I put it on the same system that we manage our WeatherSTAR Jrs on. So they all inter-operate together.
Anyways, it took me almost a year to get to this point. After I had reverse engineered and got the WeatherSTAR Jr running again, I took knowledge from that and brought it over to the 4000 project.
Since the 4000 has no program or assets until its downloaded from the satellite, I had to basically write all new code from scratch. Only thing the unit had was the RTOS Kernel in the ROM, Which I scrapped as well.
I ended up writing my own parallel tasking kernel thats much simpler, and loaded into RAM instead, so I can always patch it and recompile the C code.
Since I wrote all of the code, I simply added a new product descriptor into the presentation lineup and rendering it. I still need to add local radar, but I am waiting on my new Data Cards to come in which has a few circuit changes to add a secondary RX Channel back from the 68K CPU, so I can get current buffers back into the presentation scheduler. (So things draw in the right slots, and off-screen).
As I have full control over the software I wrote, I can pretty much do what I want, and when I want with the exception of the limitations of the hardware which some of it was fun to work around. Just as TWC had to work around it. Doing something simple as the Travel Cities Forecast takes an orchestra of delicate IRQ/code execution timing bouncing back and forth between 2 CPUs on 2 different cards. All while being executed during the VBI. Nightmare.
All of the graphics and text assets are rendered in code just as it was originally with the exception of the bitmaps which are recreations, However the Font Assets are from the WSJr. the Jr had 8 fonts, you only ever saw 3 or 4 onscreen.
Thats why it looks so realistic, Because, well, it is.
I don't want to hog the entire spotlight because I do really have to thank the group of guys I worked with and continue to work with that helped me bring this into fruition, they shall remain nameless unless I have their permission to mention them, or they mention themselves :-)
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