I know for a fact that many hospitals are still running 1970s COBOL on beige servers in the corners of basements that have been taken over by ICU wards. Because I has to maintain that shit amongst the dying. Weird job.
Comment on For some reason, I'm doubtful.
Knightfox@lemmy.one 11 months ago
What do you mean, this bad boy is probably powering a semi-critical government system somewhere, definitely not obsolete.
HowManyNimons@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Cihta@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I made so much money on this kinda stuff. And even after all updated they still kept those damn chart recorders. Luckily they were standalone and I guess easier than hitting print.
And most of you would be terrified if you knew what they were manufacturing. Ignorance is bliss, trust.
Colorcodedresistor@lemm.ee 11 months ago
[deleted]Cihta@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Why did you have to bring attitude into it?
There are components of various flying machines that are critical and must be made at certain temp and humidity. Else they are out of spec. That’s pretty much it. The people in charge of this are less thorough than you’d like.
Be nicer.
NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world 11 months ago
See also: Pennsylvania State Emissions Testing System
Zhao@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I had almost this exact scenario happen with a CNC machine for a very old but profitable niche company. Pain in my ass.
WashedOver@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Seems like this issue is across a few different industries. I had two CnC machine running software on old PC’s with special cards to interface with the drives. One was running in a Dos box while the other was running windows XP. We could never afford any down time so it was fine some old PC’s that can still run this stuff.
Cihta@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I don’t know if it’s still there but I once did some work getting a plasma cutter back to operational. OS/2. Not even warp!
Oh it’s a pretty solid OS but i mean, damn.
Parallel port hardware key and everything. I do believe in keeping what works working but at some point you gotta let go because you run out of people that can solve problems with it.
SkidFace@lemmy.world 11 months ago
This is super true. I occasionally visit a TRIGA reactor that was built decades ago, and a good chunk of the computers critical in infrastructure run comically old versions of windows since software used to operate the faculty was a custom job.
SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
There are some data recording systems on planes designed in the 90s that still use the original designs. Memory cards that are as big as your hand and only hold megabytes worth of data.
Upgrading would be fairly simple in theory, but getting anything approved to be used on an aircraft is an expensive pain in the ass so they don’t want to go through that. They don’t need any more storage capacity either.
So somewhere out there some comapnies are making these now ancient parts for now ancient systems, and probably making a killing because nobody else makes them.