Binary Dump Mystery Cache
theladyhazel: Mike died 2nd December 2015.
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(micro)
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The cache is on the coastal/public footpath close to where the bottom ash from the Douglas incinerator is being dumped. Parking is either through Balthane Industrial estate or next to the Flying Club. If on foot the nicer approach is via the coastal road from Derbyhaven. The cache is a nano so bring a pen. Coordinates given are for the general area.
In the days before everyone had a personal computer, commercial computers were the size of a room but only had 32k of memory. Data was recorded and stored on reel-to-reel magnetic tape, the units being the size of a wardrobe and woefully inefficient since the required data was usually towards the middle of the tape. Data was input via 80 column punched cards or paper tape. Only when the computer operator dropped the box of punched cards containing your program did you realize the value of the ‘optional’ sequencing in columns 73-80. Programming was done on a very basic level, none of this ‘automatic housekeeping’ of today. You had to keep count of the number of records you were storing and write them away when the area was full with header and footer information. Since the printers were so slow you would use a double-buffering technique of printing from one buffer while getting the next buffer of output ready. When the program went wrong the developer would ask for a binary dump. The contents of the entire storage at the time of the error would be printed out and the result would be pages and pages of data, all in binary code. Binary code is the language that the computer understands, consisting only of zero and one, or off and on. The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) table assigns decimal numbers to characters (e.g. A=65) and the eight-bit binary code for this is 0100 0001 ((0x128) + (1x64) + (0x32) + (0x16) + (0x8) + (0x4) + (0x2) + (1x1)) Have a go at translating some if not all of the binary code and you will soon find yourself recognizing some characters without even converting them. For those of you with a short concentration span or just in a hurry you can find a binary code translator on the internet.
01001110 01001111 01010010 01010100 01001000 00100000 01000110 01001001 01000110 01010100 01011001 00100000 01000110 01001111 01010101 01010010 00100000 01011010 01000101 01010010 01001111 00100000 01000110 01001001 01010110 01000101 00100000 01010000 01001111 01001001 01001110 01010100 00100000 01010011 01001001 01011000 00100000 01001111 01001110 01000101 00100000 01010100 01001000 01010010 01000101 01000101
01010111 01000101 01010011 01010100 00100000 01011010 01000101 01010010 01001111 00100000 01011010 01000101 01010010 01001111 00100000 01000110 01001111 01010101 01010010 00100000 01010100 01001000 01001001 01010010 01010100 01011001 00100000 01010011 01001001 01011000 00100000 01010000 01001111 01001001 01001110 01010100 00100000 01010100 01001000 01010010 01000101 01000101 00100000 01010011 01000101 01010110 01000101 01001110 00100000 01000101 01001001 01000111 01001000 01010100
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
01010100 01110010 01100101 01100101 00101110
Treasures
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