If you take a look at this 80's view of Epcot Central:
Most of the volume is occupied by audio playback equipment. The low washing machine looking things are custom built 24 track "binloops" that play back a continuous loop of tape. To the right of the binloops are five rows of racks. The first row are the minicomputer based show control units that manage playback of animation for most of the attractions. The remaining four rows are all tape cart machines for playing back short loops like narration, spiels, etc. By the 90's most of the tape units were replaced by much smaller digital players, and as attractions were replaced or rehabbed, much of that was moved to local equipment rooms.
Further back--out of view of the camera--are laserdisc players for WorldKey and interactive exhibits, video distribution racks, the computers for worldkey and other assorted systems.
A pre-opening photo, in the far-right rear of the room:
This is the DACS Animation Programming System. Later on it was moved and you can see it super small in the far left side of the first image. The gray box on the left of the image is a Liebert air conditioner, the orange boxes in the front right are hard disks with removable disk packs stacked on top, and the actual Data General minicomputer is the rack right in the middle of frame, with four tape drives the the adjacent racks.
These days audio is all digital and doesn't need constant babysitting. The computers likewise are tiny, and they can all go in local equipment rooms. Central is still there but has much less equipment in it.
Most of the volume is occupied by audio playback equipment. The low washing machine looking things are custom built 24 track "binloops" that play back a continuous loop of tape. To the right of the binloops are five rows of racks. The first row are the minicomputer based show control units that manage playback of animation for most of the attractions. The remaining four rows are all tape cart machines for playing back short loops like narration, spiels, etc. By the 90's most of the tape units were replaced by much smaller digital players, and as attractions were replaced or rehabbed, much of that was moved to local equipment rooms.
Further back--out of view of the camera--are laserdisc players for WorldKey and interactive exhibits, video distribution racks, the computers for worldkey and other assorted systems.
A pre-opening photo, in the far-right rear of the room:
This is the DACS Animation Programming System. Later on it was moved and you can see it super small in the far left side of the first image. The gray box on the left of the image is a Liebert air conditioner, the orange boxes in the front right are hard disks with removable disk packs stacked on top, and the actual Data General minicomputer is the rack right in the middle of frame, with four tape drives the the adjacent racks.
These days audio is all digital and doesn't need constant babysitting. The computers likewise are tiny, and they can all go in local equipment rooms. Central is still there but has much less equipment in it.
