User-defined, yes. Easily re-programmable, I don't think so. Unlike a simple software re-map, the TOS panels required someone on the back end linking them to the task needed. Scotty had to do some behind the scenes switching around of the warp and impulse control systems and also the impulse detonator in "The Doomsday Machine". Now a panel tasked to be the helm controls might be reconfigurable for helm controls (like inverted manual flying) but it may not be a simple push a button and make it the life support controls panel (unless it was already designed, built and wired in that way), IMHO.
Bridge Modules
- Thread starter Cmdr.Druss
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User-defined, yes. Easily re-programmable, I don't think so. Unlike a simple software re-map, the TOS panels required someone on the back end linking them to the task needed. Scotty had to do some behind the scenes switching around of the warp and impulse control systems and also the impulse detonator in "The Doomsday Machine". Now a panel tasked to be the helm controls might be reconfigurable for helm controls (like inverted manual flying) but it may not be a simple push a button and make it the life support controls panel (unless it was already designed, built and wired in that way), IMHO.
In some FanFic...
All Consoles are the same. Save some have individual display screens (like for engineering/science), and in other areas have a common screen for multiple users (like the Bridge).
When the User sits/attempts to use the Console, the Computer via Facial Recognition, implant or password, creates a configuration appropriate to that Users authorization.
So, any console could function in any capacity from anywhere in the Ship, and if a User had multiple authorizations (engineering/tactical/other) there could be a selection made at the console, to include duplexing.
With this capability, that doesn't mean that a Console couldn't be locked into a specific task.
All Consoles are the same. Save some have individual display screens (like for engineering/science), and in other areas have a common screen for multiple users (like the Bridge).
When the User sits/attempts to use the Console, the Computer via Facial Recognition, implant or password, creates a configuration appropriate to that Users authorization.
So, any console could function in any capacity from anywhere in the Ship, and if a User had multiple authorizations (engineering/tactical/other) there could be a selection made at the console, to include duplexing.
With this capability, that doesn't mean that a Console couldn't be locked into a specific task.
Tribble Herder
Lieutenant Commander
Which doesn't count a whit.
Lots of people read these Forums, for a many reasons. Some may be doing research on an idea of theirs. IF I can make some contribution to their effort, I'd like that very much. Should someone not be interested in any Post placed here, it's real easy to just read past it, for the information that you're really untested in.
Being reprogrammable doesn't necessarily mean instantaneously so. Scotty does manage to pull off that drive control re-purposing in the time between the Enterprise starting its initial pursuit of the planet killer and the E being seized by the PK's tractor beam.
What part of Scotty's toiling should we consider "reprogramming of the console", though? For all we can tell, reprogramming of controls is instantaneous, and done by pushing the buttons - it's repairing of the other end of things that takes time.
Okay, so rigging the impulse engines to blow appears to involve the flipping of exactly two switches at Auxiliary Control. Surely that console wasn't originally programmed to do that? And surely the reprogramming cannot consist merely of flicking that one switch and thus turning the other into the trigger? But this doesn't mean that Scotty would have had to do complex rewirings elsewhere in the ship. Suffice for him to reprogram other bits of equipment, with a few pushes, so that he can present the AC console for Kirk to use with minimum mods. The blow-up switch is red to start with, suggesting it's already keyed to perform some destructive function... It now happens to be connected to a new sort of destruction, is all.
If anything, "DDM" tells us that consoles can be told to do surprising things nobody could have preplanned for, with minor effort.
Timo Saloniemi
Okay, so rigging the impulse engines to blow appears to involve the flipping of exactly two switches at Auxiliary Control. Surely that console wasn't originally programmed to do that? And surely the reprogramming cannot consist merely of flicking that one switch and thus turning the other into the trigger? But this doesn't mean that Scotty would have had to do complex rewirings elsewhere in the ship. Suffice for him to reprogram other bits of equipment, with a few pushes, so that he can present the AC console for Kirk to use with minimum mods. The blow-up switch is red to start with, suggesting it's already keyed to perform some destructive function... It now happens to be connected to a new sort of destruction, is all.
If anything, "DDM" tells us that consoles can be told to do surprising things nobody could have preplanned for, with minor effort.
Timo Saloniemi
KIRK: What about the detonator?
SCOTT: I've linked it in with the impulse control system. It's armed now. Press this one. Thirty seconds later, poof!
Actually from the dialogue, that console was part of the "impulse control system". It appears that he just re-mapped two of the switches to the detonator while he was down in engineering.SCOTT: I've linked it in with the impulse control system. It's armed now. Press this one. Thirty seconds later, poof!
It would suggest that any control panel's functions can be re-wired/re-mapped but it would require someone on the backend to either electronically or physically perform the action.
Tribble Herder
Lieutenant Commander
That's also the notorious piece of dialogue where Jimmy Doohan's accent mysteriously disappears momentarily.
Uhura pretty easily accessed communications from the navigation console, a function which we never saw before.
Uhura pretty easily accessed communications from the navigation console, a function which we never saw before.
Gary Mitchell put Kirk on the ship's PA system from the nav console in Where No man...
I've never been able to tell - it's not as if the accent's that consistent overall. He misses an "r" here or there anyway. Which for all I know may be how Scots do it for real. My language lacks the richness of different r's; they all roll in Finnish, regardless of their place in a word or a sentence. But the real Scots I have listened to have their own secret rules for when to roll and when not to, and Doohan's thing doesn't appear to differ significantly.
Quite so. The nav console in the pilot doesn't really have a button that would match the various intercoms in shape or positioning, though - and anyway, when Mitchell activates the PA, he does it with the side of his hand, seemingly sweeping the flat panel to the right of his buttons. Another example of multifunctionality and reconfigurability perhaps not exactly intended by the set designers?
Timo Saloniemi
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