3 ms·

The trains in Melbourne ran on a DEC PDP-11/84 based signalling system. In 2003 they started to move the application to PC running Windows XP using a special p

The trains in Melbourne ran on a DEC PDP-11/84 based signalling system. In 2003 they started to move the application to PC running Windows XP using a special processor card to virtualise the old CPUs although "Due to the core software limitation (no source code available) we were compelled to integrate some original PDP-11 computer cards into the final product and this resulted in a hybrid PC platform" https://www.equicon.de/images/Virtualisierung/LegacyTrainControlSystemStabilization.pdf https://www.equicon.de/images/Virtualisierung/LegacyTrainCon...

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xvilka 7y ago
Why not to hire a reverse engineering company and restore the source code for them?
- DividableMiddle 7y ago
  General question: how much would one of these services cost? Any references to any?
  - xvilka 7y ago
    It depends heavily on target, architecture, used programming languages, binary size, if the binaries were stripped, etc. From $1k to millions.
- adrianN 7y ago
  Would that be legal?
  - xvilka 7y ago
    It is is their own code, why not? In the worst case there is always clean room reverse engineering.
  - anonymfus 7y ago
    Australian lawyers from the top of Google Search results say that it can be if done careful: > Generally, where a computer program is reverse engineered by copying the idea of the function presented in the program code, the original computer programmer’s copyright is not infringed. Where a computer program’s expressions in code are reproduced or adapted (including into a different computer programming language), the original computer program’s copyright is likely to be infringed. This means that where reverse engineering occurs by “clean room” design, Australian courts are unlikely to find that there has been an infringement of the original author’s copyright. Source: https://www.dundaslawyers.com.au/reverse-engineering-of-software-what-are-the-legal-boundaries/ https://www.dundaslawyers.com.au/reverse-engineering-of-soft...
jcims 7y ago
Mostly unrelated story: I did a security assessment for a small bank that had moved their core processing software from the original HP 3000 hardware platform to a hardware emulator environment running on windows (something like this https://www.stromasys.com/solutions/charon-hpa/ https://www.stromasys.com/solutions/charon-hpa/) We cordoned it off from the network assessment out of concerns that it would be fragile. The assessment went as expected, but as we wrapped that portion the bank manager wanted us to have a go at the HP off hours ‘just to see’. Never did figure out which part died, emulator or emulatee, but it went down hard within about three seconds.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

xvilka 7y ago

Why not to hire a reverse engineering company and restore the source code for them?

DividableMiddle 7y ago
General question: how much would one of these services cost? Any references to any?
- xvilka 7y ago
  It depends heavily on target, architecture, used programming languages, binary size, if the binaries were stripped, etc. From $1k to millions.
adrianN 7y ago
Would that be legal?
- xvilka 7y ago
  It is is their own code, why not? In the worst case there is always clean room reverse engineering.
- anonymfus 7y ago
  Australian lawyers from the top of Google Search results say that it can be if done careful: > Generally, where a computer program is reverse engineered by copying the idea of the function presented in the program code, the original computer programmer’s copyright is not infringed. Where a computer program’s expressions in code are reproduced or adapted (including into a different computer programming language), the original computer program’s copyright is likely to be infringed. This means that where reverse engineering occurs by “clean room” design, Australian courts are unlikely to find that there has been an infringement of the original author’s copyright. Source: https://www.dundaslawyers.com.au/reverse-engineering-of-software-what-are-the-legal-boundaries/ https://www.dundaslawyers.com.au/reverse-engineering-of-soft...

jcims 7y ago

Mostly unrelated story: I did a security assessment for a small bank that had moved their core processing software from the original HP 3000 hardware platform to a hardware emulator environment running on windows (something like this https://www.stromasys.com/solutions/charon-hpa/ https://www.stromasys.com/solutions/charon-hpa/) We cordoned it off from the network assessment out of concerns that it would be fragile. The assessment went as expected, but as we wrapped that portion the bank manager wanted us to have a go at the HP off hours ‘just to see’. Never did figure out which part died, emulator or emulatee, but it went down hard within about three seconds.