[GreenKeys] Answers About ITTY

[George B. Hutchison]

Greetings Mr. Cosgrove & GreenKeyers - - -

ITTY currently runs a 60 WPM channel and a 66 WPM Channel.

This coming weekend some changes will take place..

At this time the ITTY 60 Speed Tones are generated by a modified AEA CP-1 
Computer Interface.

66 Speed tones are generated by a soundcard which is in the same 
housing/case as the ITTY 66 Information system.

This weekend both of the Current ITTY Channels will be switched over to tone 
sourcing by a pair of ST-8000A Terminal units which will be optionally keyed 
by the associated news handling computer or from a data stream coming from a 
Model 28 ASR or a 28 TD running at 66 WPM for ITTY 66.

As the ST-8000A mods are completed to match the first two, two additional 
channels will be added to the ITTY line up.

The information content of the additional channels has not been determined, 
so, the ITTY staff is open to suggestions.

The tone pair of ITTY 66 will be changed to 1275 - 1445 to match the 
European Standard.

Bill Bytheway has gifted ITTY with the management and distribution rights to 
the ITTY software.

There will be a pretty good bundle of ITTY software made available in the 
coming weeks. It will be downloadable or available on a CD ROM.

The mention of competition is interesting. Until a person gets into it few 
have any idea of just how much dedication it takes to give the system a 
reasonably professional appearance.

Back in the days of WA9XHN and WC2 XPF yours truly spent every afternoon, 
evening, and weekend rummaging through the news sources that were available 
to make up a reasonably decent quantity and quality of news items. Over a 
period of 21 months, that was literally thousands of hours expended in the 
pursuit of giving the people who have some manner of deep affection, regard 
for, or interest in teletype machines, something for their machines to 
print.

Wayne LeTourneau, Tom Tillson, and Don House spend several hours per day 
gathering, preparing, and submitting items to ITTY. All members of GreenKeys 
and whomever else who use ITTY owe these gentlemen a big THANK YOU for their 
efforts.

Some technical info.

Dell GX-150 computers constitute the bulk of the computing power used by 
ITTY. They are cheap, extremely reliable, and easy to manage. Operating is 
Windows XP Pro w/SP3.

Each channel takes two computers. One handles the incoming news and the 
management of the stories, and the second is the server which puts the audio 
out on the net.

ITTY WILL run on a single computer, and will actually handle three or four 
simultaneous information management channels on one machine. The 
disadvantage of such a system is that if all is on a single computer, and it 
bites the dust, the whole ball of wax is out of commission.

The same goes for the server which puts the audio on the net.

The Navy taught and demanded use of the principle of redundancy, and that is 
how we do it.

The system uses the SHOUTCAST Streaming Audio system. It is free, and 
extremely reliable.

ITTY uses a very low sampling rate and monaural operation in order to 
conserve bandwidth, which is very important for those still on dialup, as 
the narrow bandwidth allows those on dialup to copy without annoying 
interruptions due to audio buffers emptying out.

The shoutcast system offers a number of MP3 encoders, but does not have a 
super low sample rate.

Audio Realm offers an encoding and streaming audio management program called 
"Simplecast". It' costs about 29 dollars, and offers MP3 encoders which do a 
good job running 11 khz sample rate, mono, and a bit rate of 16 Kbs.

You also need the latest version of WinAmp in order to get the Shoutcast 
server to function.

As other projects get completed,  WWW.ITTYNEWS.COM will end up being an 
information site/operating manual for ITTY and the ITTY Mailer system.

ITTYNEWS.COM has a home page at this time, but no links to the forthcoming 
material.

Time to get out to the workshop and drill a few more holes and install 80 
clinch nuts.

George - W7TTY - ITTY Central