Historic NASA Project Files And Software Appear In Amiga 2500 eBay Listing
According to the eBay listing, the system was used in NASA's telemetry labs and is decked out with a NASA asset and inventory tags from 2005. The Amiga 2500 was equipped with two custom boards that helped it to analyze telemetry data for various NASA-related equipment in space: an Amiga 2000 serial interface and an Amiga 2000 remote DMA output controller. Both boards feature 50-pin SCSI connectors for connecting to [we're assuming] external storage. Other [hardware] items of note include 16MB of RAM and a GVP 68030 accelerator card operating at 40MHz.
"I booted it up and went through the directories and found a lot of interesting programs & data files referencing several NASA projects: AC.135, 141, 164, AURA, GP8, MS10, MS11, MS7, MS9, P91, TITAN, PEGASUS, TAURUS, and lots more," wrote eBay'er vrus, who listed the Amiga 2500 system. "Each project has C source files which were the programs they used to interface with these various space assets."
One the most interesting aspects of this Amiga eBay listing is that some of the programs found on the system are registered to Dave Brown. Vrus seems to think that Dave Brown refers to astronaut Dave Brown, who was tragically killed during the Shuttle Columbia accident in 2003. Dave Brown was a U.S. Navy flight surgeon, and became a naval aviator in 1990. He was selected by NASA in 1996, and performed 2 years of training, after which he qualified for a flight assignment as a mission specialist.
However, after viewing this NASA video above regarding Amiga computers that was referenced in the eBay listing, it seems as though this is a different Dave Brown, a principal programmer, given how the two men reference him (and the seemingly unrelated duties for an astronaut).
Regardless of which Dave Brown is referenced in the Amiga 2500, it's still an interesting piece of computing history and shows just how versatile Amiga systems were (and still are for some). Unfortunately, this system is currently listed at around $5,300, which is hefty sum for this piece of NASA history.
