At tonight’s preseason matchup against the Blackhawks, the clock stopped operating for awhile, which caused Wes Johnson to announce the time over the PA system. However it wasn’t just the clock, as apparently the entire system locked up. REBOOT! Shortly there after Caps fans were greeted with some familiar messages on the screens around the Verizon Center. As the system was reset, you could see the standard messages from a PC bios, and then the Windows Safe Mode bootup screen :
Why anyone would trust such a critical system to Microsoft Windows is beyond me, but I’ll just assume it’s an industry standard. It is fairly impressive how all of the screens around the arena are driven by one integrated system, which I assume is far easier to operate than the boards that were installed in the arena originally. I suppose anyone who wants to hack their way up onto the display boards at Verizon Center now has a bit more information on how they operate.
