Stopped by the local city planetarium with the kids to get out of the heat

Posted 2024-10-06 | Back to blog index

Stopped by the local city planetarium with the kids to get out of the heat. It's a very cute affair, with a 44 year old projector and a rim full of remote controlled slide projectors for the constellations and mirrors on spinning motors for shooting stars etc. The presenter has a flashlight with an arrow shape to point things out. Peeking behind the control desk, there's a PC98 with an extra external floppy drive, presumably to program the sequence.

Planetarium entrance. Everything looks very late 80's/early 90s aside from the modern card reader. The only word in English is “information” Planetarium with projector in center. It's quite small, only 2 rows of seats. Four “color CABIN-II”-branded compact slide projectors aimed upwards, ready to show the constellations. The one in the rear is pointed at a mirror pointed toward it, revealing a motor on the read of it with a controller box with speed and reverse Behind the control desk, revealing an NEC PC9801RA with an external 3.5in floppy drive. There is also a reel to reel tape(?) deck built into the desk console

Here's a closeup of that PC98 I'm sure you all want to see

An NEC PC-9801RA with internal 5-inch floppy drives and an external 3.5in floppy drive. There are floppies in 3 of the drives. The screen is off.

They also had this little globe projector you could pick which planet or moon to view and spin it around with the projector.

If you hit the “back” button too many times you ended up on the Windows desktop…

It's running this software https://www.dagik.net

A large sphere hung from the wall with Mars projected on it. In front is an Elecom USB arcade controller and a list of planets/moons with numbers corresponding to the arcade controller buttons The same sphere as before but it has the windows desktop projected on it

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