Back in the day, if you wandered into the parking area behind Building 11 on the original Redmond Microsoft campus, you would find a very large satellite dish antenna. This antenna was used for receiving video signals, such as cable television feeds for distribution to the Redmond campus. One purpose was to provide cable TV service for internal development and testing to teams like the Windows Media Center team and later the Xbox One team.

The satellite dish antenna was a Simulsat-5 which was capable of gathering signals from 35 satellites simultaneously. (The record during this particular antenna’s lifetime was 26 simultaneous satellites.) It was a stationary antenna, not capable of changing its orientation. It went into service in 1997, was upgraded a few times, until it was finally decommissioned in 2017 when all of its tasks had been subsumed by a satellite dish antenna at the Studio C building.

Fun trivial about the satellite dish antenna:

In the summer, bees would nest in the feedbox (the thingie at focus of the satellite dish antenna that collected the signal), so you had to be careful when doing work there to avoid getting stung.

It wasn’t fun in the winter either, because the enclosure for the electronic equipment (known as the “doghouse”) would get filled with spiders who enjoyed the warmth from the equipment.

Snow had to be kept off the antenna for it to continue receiving signals, so whether or not Microsoft formally declared a snow closure, somebody had to remain on site to clear off the snow.

In 2007, there was a mystery to be solved: Occasionally, there would be interference that disrupted the signal. After some investigation, it was discovered that the source was electromagnetic interference generated by the pressure washers that were used to clean the parking lot. The water connection port was at the rear of Building 11, right near the satellite dish antenna. The solution was to do parking lot cleaning at night (when there was less demand for video signals), or if doing it during the day, to put the water pressure generators far away from the antenna.

My favorite piece of trivia is that in addition to being able to control the satellite dish antenna via the front panel, you could also control it over an RS-232 serial port. The serial line ran from the satellite dish to a Toshiba model 400CDT Satellite Pro (get it? Satellite pro?) running MS-DOS. Here’s an archival photo, with some identifying stickers digitally erased.


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