Genuine query for your thoughts:

http://www.space.com/25730-nasa-isee3-spacecraft-revive-crowdfunding.html?cmpid=514630_20140503_23150604

I asked for thoughts - not people being shitty to each other mind!

...and it is the programmers and tech people I want the oionions of!

TA!

While some hardware would be needed to communicate with the thing, anything else could certainly be emulated or rewritten. It's the communication interface that's important, in order to send commands the unit can use, and to interpret signals coming back, the actual computer/software to do so matters little to not at all.

It's certainly an interesting project and idea for similar future projects, and I hope it succeeds.

From what I understand though, theyre looking at basically doing a "SCUMVM" kinda thing with it - in this case at least (of course, near 3am here)

Exactly.

How the original controlling machine worked is of little importance, but like ScummVM needs to be able to use the original game data files, this project needs to read the data sent back from the probe and send the right commands back up. The interface on "our" side (compare mouse/keyboard/controller input and methods of display and audio playback from ScummVM, with its filters, scaling, and whatnot) is best remade for modern expectations.

I expect the team behind this hav a fairly good idea of what they have to work with, with regards to the probe's input/output. Beyond that, it's "merely" up to programmers to make something that fits the mold (like ScummVM).

I am not a professional tech or programmers but I am a hobbyist that know several programming languages and own an oscilloscope, several power supplies (from low amp/high voltage to high amp/ low voltage, and a few function generators. I must confess that my electronic lab has not been used in some time as I'm trying to figure out a cheap way to do some things that are borderline nuts: anti gravity and time travel. OK, they are way passed the border of nuts and deep in the clinically mad scientist department

This is very interesting and also a commentary on the throw away culture that some people at NASA have. By throw away culture I mean some of the missions that they did that were not successful, they found out what went wrong in most (or all) cases but did not retry. I have no example in my mind right now except that there was a few failures involving Mars before the current string of unimaginable successes.

I believe that this is because bureaucracy and politic overcame engineering a long time ago at NASA. It's the only explanation of why a still working probe is not still in use.

On the subject of that probe, I did not read their kickstarter proposition but I do hope that the reason they need so much money to rent some time on some space transmitter. My budget right now permits me to buy booze and low price games but a couple of years ago I would have had enough disposable income to send a little money their way.

I do believe what they are doing is possible and worth it. Figuring out the protocols of a 70's probe should be fairly easy if you have access to all its specs.