![]() To get Weatherscan working at home, the group of friends found decommissioned Intellistar units on eBay and used forensic tools to reconstruct data from the hard drives, piecing together a working version of the Weatherscan software from multiple sources. It includes an ATI card for generating the graphics and a proprietary PowerPC-based card that pulls it all together to make it broadcast-ready. One of the Intellistar computer models behind the service runs FreeBSD on a Pentium 4-based PC in a blue rack-mount enclosure. However, getting Weatherscan to run locally was a team effort, primarily by friends named Ethan, Brian, and Jesse. Some have also created software that simulates the service in a browser. Hobbyists like Bates (who goes by " techknight" on Twitter) have collected the hardware necessary to run their own Weatherscan stations out of their homes. ![]() "It's 20 years old now, and more and more cable companies have been pulling the service." "Weatherscan has been dying a slow death over the course of the last 10 years because the hardware is aging," says Mike Bates, a tech hobbyist who collects and restores Weather Channel computer hardware as part of a group of die-hard fans who follow insider news from the company. There are also technical issues with maintaining the hardware behind the service. ![]() Declining viewership and the ubiquity of smartphone weather apps are the primary reasons it's going offline. It shows automated local weather information on a loop, generated by an Intellistar computer system installed locally for each market. Launched in 1999, Weatherscan currently appears in a dwindling number of local American cable TV and satellite markets. But a group of die-hard fans will not let it go quietly into the night. After 23 years, The Weather Channel announced that Weatherscan will be shutting down permanently on or before December 9. ![]() ![]() An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In the early 2000s, Americans who wanted to catch the local weather forecast at any time might turn on their TV and switch over to Weatherscan, a 24-hour computer-controlled weather forecast channel with a relaxing smooth jazz soundtrack. ![]()
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