Anyone else notice...

I'm almost 100% sure I saw Sandor (the guy from Intamin) standing on the unload platform of TTD yesterday (5/9) using some sort of device and checking the wheels. Did anyone else see him? I also saw Monty for the first time when TTD broke down once.

-tW

No, but I did notice that there were a lot of Intamin guys there last night...

Ya, I noticed him, and many others. Especially at around 10-10:15 pm. It was a good time...the ride kept "stalling". Wed hear the revving and it would die. We were in the launch position for the better part of 8 or so minutes. Then the breaks would lower out of know where.

It was also cool to see five trains of all sixteen seats :)

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Six Flags: The AOL of Theme parks...
*** This post was edited by Stretch 5/10/2003 1:54:16 PM ***

They spent a while in the station of TTD. At one point, when I was 2 trains from being launched the ride broke down again, and they pulled out 2 Large Orange boxes, and they had to release the lap bars manually. Another guy also had a floppy disk, anyone know what that's about?

LOL Do any of us look like we work for Intamin? Just wondering.

Yeah, I was waiting in the station last night when they kept stopping the engine sounds. They'd only do it for a few minutes at a time, but it happened like 5 times.

The one time they had to take the train out from the lanuch posistion into the waiting to lanuch area. Anybody know what that could be about?

Yes, Sandor was there yesterday. He was clocking the train with radar from the safety brakes and measuring temperature and wear on the wheels with his other little scanner thing.

He was personally assisting with getting the ride back up at least once, also. He was sticking his head under one of the trains in the unload station poking at something.

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- John

Man, it sure sounds like TTD breaks down a lot?! My boyfriend keeps reading this and tells me he won't go on it!! I keep telling him to suck it up and be quiet!! It'll be fun!!! We're going next Sunday (9/18)!! So, how much does it break down, well, while you were there?!

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2003 ~ Magnum Ride Photo

"Breakdown" is somewhat of a misnomer. TTD has over 300 sensors on its track (they're the little green cubes between the rails), and the operators are still learning how to run the ride smoothly. Whenever anything goes out of sync, whether mechanically or by operator error, the ride shuts down, and in some cases (if not all), the system must be reset. It is this very property that makes this ride as safe as possible, so your boyfriend shouldn't be worried about the ride "breaking down". It just usually needs a reset, and it's back up and running.

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Top Thrill Dragster - the best 20 seconds of my life!!! (my GTTP sig)
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I would rather hear synthesizers sing than hear rappers talk. (my universal sig)

yeah...this ride does break down alot but it's all because it's new and the employees are still getting used to the controls and the feel of it. but tell your boyfriend that if he does't go he is missing out on the greatest coaster of his life. that is not my opinion that is the truth.

I noticed Mr. Kinsel was in the station of TTD when the gates opened for Joe Cool Club people ;)

I would imagine the floppy had logs or something for the computer system on them. Since TTD must have reliable computers, they're probably UNIX based. Windoze as we all know crashes at one time or another.

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Due To Budget Cuts, The Light At The End Of The Tunnel Has Been Turned Off.
MilleNNium is spelled with two n's people!

Actually, the ride most likely is using proprietary embedded systems...but logging and monitoring is frequently piped out to cheap PCs that can be used as smart terminals for the PLCs, and cheap PC generally equates to Windoze.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Windows doesn't crash. Let go of that baseless nonsense claim. This site is served by Windows and has been for years. It doesn't crash unless I break something.

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Jeff
Webmaster/GTTP - Sillynonsense.com
"Pray that your country undergoes recovery!" - KMFDM

I'll second Jeff's observation. Since moving my machines to NT-based kernels, there have been substantial improvements in reliability. I'd say W2K and XP are both comparable to our Debian/2.4 kernel machines.

What, you want us to use Linux? I have other things to do than mess with an OS that is at best not user friendly.

Hey jeff, if you're using Windows 95, 98, 98SE or ME it will actually crash after so many days.. After 2^32 milliseconds, or after 49.710269 days.... Got to love those fake 32 bit operating systems ;)

Now i meant the general population of windows machines crash. Normally because of people who don't know what they're doing. My machine hasn't crashed in well over a year. But on something as large scale as TTD with the reliability needs, it wouldn't use windows for the main systems, but if it does it would likely be NT based. Which is 2K/NT/or XP.

As bholcomb says, anything 9x crashes after 50 days.

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Due To Budget Cuts, The Light At The End Of The Tunnel Has Been Turned Off.
MilleNNium is spelled with two n's people!
*** This post was edited by TJohnson 5/12/2003 2:16:00 PM ***

I'm guessing, as rideman suggested, that its run by a specialized OS. Theres no need to have the overhead of a modern day Operating System when you're just, in essence, using sensors and math and a couple bits of user input. Just think of what a pain it would be to develop a gui for a program to run on windows to run the ride.

No, I don't want you to use Linux. I don't care what you or anyone else uses.

I use windows on my personal machines for a number of reasons, most recently because I am kicking the tires of a tablet PC (which I really really like). I use Linux for research because (a) I can get access to the source without signing away my firstborn and (b) I don't have to have my students write a bunch of device drivers.