11 ms·
Technician keeps computer made in 1959 still humming along
- Aromasin 7y agoWe've got a computer in the lab from the 70's that we use to upload firmware for some legacy chips still in service on aircraft (a cabin lighting system, not anything vital to the aircraft staying in the air!). I dread the day that it breaks because it's all bespoke software and hardware. We tried to back it up to another device but it's simply not compatible with anything except that computer. When it finally gives up the ghost it's likely going to cost thousands to design a new system with modern hardware, which doesn't even include the cost of writing up all the new safety documentation and grounding the aircraft for a refit! To add to the headache, it's all written in BASIC so the only ones who knew how to do anything with it have long retired or passed away. I don't look forward to the day I have to reverse engineer that bad boy.
- davesmith1983 7y ago“If the computer does not work, it will become a mere ornament,” I own some old kit that I like to keep working mainly some Amiga and Atari ST machines and he's 100% right. Unless people see what they are doing they literally assume they are some sort of keyboard.
- walshemj 7y agoI recall being told that when I worked for British Telecom they caught some cleaners stealing just the what they where thought where computers but where in fact just the key boards :-) Probably in Manchester as that was a bit of a thing up there -Later on I helped refit an office for the third time after they had been cleaned out twice.
- davesmith1983 7y agoWe have some cleaners come in and they always constantly rearrange the keyboard, desk monitors etc. Which normally causes a few groans in the morning as everything has been moved. One guy was having a moan about it and I said "You know the women that clean this probably have never used a computer other than maybe their phone?".
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago> and then I said something unkind about someone I don't even know. I personally try to thank our office's cleaning lady. She does a lot of work, and everyone appreciates it.
- davesmith1983 7y agoI did no such thing! I have personally spoken to them and they have told me they have no idea how to use the desktop machines. I was simply trying to explain to my colleague who has known a world with modern computers being prevalent that there are still many people that have never used them.
- _underfl0w_ 7y agoYikes. Not the kind of thing I'd go repeating there, friend. Your entitlement is showing. Your assumptions: - The cleaners must be women - The cleaners must have a quality of life so low they've never used a desktop - The cleaners aren't you and are therefore ignorant in some way Plus, if they really do meet that second qualification, disparaging them for it only makes you look even worse. I would encourage you to seek out somebody who does meet those qualifications. You might learn something.
- davesmith1983 7y agoNo not at all. I have seen the cleaners and have spoken to them and they are clearly women. One of them told me that she has no idea what we do, what the computers are used for and has never used a desktop pc. I doubt she is unique among her peers. Quite a lot of people that do "Blue Collar" jobs that are in their 50s and 60s probably don't have to interact with a computer that often (I know my father doesn't). If they do it is normally through a kiosk of some sort or they are using their phone. I was actually adjusting my coworkers expectations. He is younger than me and the thought hadn't entered his mind that someone may have never used a modern computer. So in future before you start spouting about people being entitled, maybe you should not make a bunch of assumptions that is based on your incorrect reading of a comment.
- xiphmont 7y agoMy god. That machine is beautiful.
- jdsully 7y agoIts one of the reasons I wrote a port of my database for my IMSAI 8080 [1]. You only think you know a machine until you try to use it. From experience I can say emulators are just not faithful to the actual experience of the physical hardware. They are too fast and too perfect. The other nice thing about these old machines is you can understand the whole thing. You get a better idea of what is fundamental and what is just fashion. [1] https://github.com/JohnSully/KeyDB_Z80 https://github.com/JohnSully/KeyDB_Z80
- HillaryBriss 7y ago> They are too fast and too perfect. IDK. The android emulators I run on my Mac sure don't seem perfect. For one thing, scrolling a RecyclerView up and down using the mouse doesn't always work right. Gesture detection seems to lag or miss events sometimes. Working with a physical android device is often more stable and "solid" IME. OTOH android emulators do seem pretty fast.
- jdsully 7y agoAt this vintage of machine we're talking about things like pulling individual RAM chips which have gone bad, and hardware that is just too slow to even keep up with 9600 baud datastreams - despite the fact you wrote it all in assembly and hand optimized it. Not to mention the fun of playing with front panel switches. I built an emulator for one long before I acquired my IMSAI. They did not behave at all how I expected. Even more interesting the front panels are not synchronous on these "hobby" machines from the 70s but instead are timed by RC circuits that are supposed to be "close enough" to the CPUs clock. Not all of these problems are from age (although that has an effect), the hardware was pretty flaky even when new.
- noobermin 7y ago> Even more interesting the front panels are not synchronous on these "hobby" machines from the 70s but instead are timed by RC circuits that are supposed to be "close enough" to the CPUs clock. That is by far one of the most curious things I've ever read on Hacker News.
- Retro-Reboot 7y agoA Mechanical Marvel
- cosmodisk 7y agoWhile not even close to what this guy does,I do run my IBM thinkpad every now and then,which is probably about 20 years old.I reinstalled Linux recently and it just works..The keyboard is still lightyears better than most of that crap one could find in most of today's laptops.. What the guy does with the computer is amazing and I'm really glad the management allow him to carry on with it.
- xelxebar 7y agoSpeaking of, I'm trying to get my hands on a T400s Thinkpad, but not having much luck finding these units. I plan on flashing it with libreboot and want to give guixsd a try as a daily driver.
- Aperocky 7y agoIt's a lot easier to have better keyboard when space and weight is not a concern.
- CamperBob2 7y agoOh, those were concerns back then, too. They just weren't the only concerns, as they are now.
- cosmodisk 7y agoCan only agree to certain extent.Lenovo ThinkPads retain exceptionally good keyboard design despite being wafer thin.I have a bulky Toshiba made in 2015 and the keyboard is just very so so. At work I've got XPS 13 and the keyboard is really nice,so ultimately its down to the industrial designers.
- caymanjim 7y agoI have a late-2018 ThinkPad X1 Extreme, and while I love the feel of the keyboard, the keys around the mouse nub (GHBN) started becoming increasingly unresponsive after only a few months. Last week, the whole machine died horribly (unrelated), so I'm hoping to get the keyboard replaced as well when I send it in. I love the machine, and overall it's well-built, but I'm going to be wary of the keyboard. One of the main reasons I bought the ThinkPad was because I'd gotten fed up with MacBook keyboard failures.
- uberalex 7y agoI apologise if I've failed a reading comprehension check, but did the article say what the computer was used for?
- Gene_Parmesan 7y ago"The FACOM128B greatly contributed to technological advancements during the period of Japan’s high economic growth from the early 1960s to the early 1970s. The computer was used in the design of camera lenses and the YS-11 plane, Japan’s first passenger aircraft developed after the end of World War II."
- mirimir 7y agoI suspect that parent wonders what it does now. Which is likely ~nothing. But I am curious how it compares with current machines. Comparable to an i5 desktop? Or to a smartphone?
- blacksmith_tb 7y agoWith 13K of memory[1] I doubt you could compare it to anything modern bigger than the simplest e-toy... 1: http://museum.ipsj.or.jp/en/heritage/facom128b.html http://museum.ipsj.or.jp/en/heritage/facom128b.html
- mirimir 7y agoTrue, but some of those old machines could do amazing stuff with ~huge datasets. Basically by just doing one ~simple operation per data pass. Read, do something simple, write. Then repeat that as many times as needed, with a different operation. Sort of like executing a program one line at a time.
- rbanffy 7y agoThey did crazy tricks because timesharing wasn't invented and whatever program was running had the full machine to itself. Also, designers of these computers usually built everything around the flow of data so that a CPU would have as little as possible to do to read tapes or cards.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- arbuge 7y agoBrought to mind this story: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a16010/30-year-old-computer-runs-school-heat/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a...
- organsnyder 7y agoMy guess is that this computer is no longer in service, or soon won't be (we passed a school millage for building upgrades not too long ago).
- Circuits 7y agoAs Ezreal would say: "That thing belongs in a museum. .. all of this belongs in a museum, I wont tell anyone."
- Hamuko 7y agoHaving watched and listened to the video, the phrase "still humming along" is definitely a misnomer.
- jedberg 7y agoA friend of mine used to get paid a very senior engineer salary to maintain an old VAX system. The system ran a trading algorithm that made about $1M a day, so they figured it was worth keeping him around to do almost nothing at all, other than make sure that thing ran during trading hours.
- cosmodisk 7y agoWould be interesting to hear more about this. Considering it was only an algorithm,was there no way to migrate it?
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y agoI bet the only complete specification of the algorithm was the program running on that one machina, and that it was written in some ancient VAX assembly. Also, $1M is a lot of money to risk subtle changes to the logic of a 40-year old program. Main reason why big financial orgs are still running software from the 50's on mainframes, that.
- jussij 7y agoIf it ain't broke, don't fix it.
- pythonslayer 7y agoThe financial industry is broken, though. :P
- rxhernandez 7y agoI have seen first hand that some algorithms can be quite sophisticated and even having the source code (without documentation) isn't nearly enough when the binaries that support the mathematics only run on an archaic piece of hardware.
- ambicapter 7y agoFun implication being there exists a trading strategy that consistently make $1M a day for 40+ years (I guess what isn't mentioned is how much capital was backing up that strategy)?
- Aardwolf 7y agoRelay based, more reliable and needing less replacement than vacuum tubes I assume, and nice clicking sound too :)
- nwallin 7y ago> Relay based, more reliable and needing less replacement than vacuum tubes I assume, Kinda sorta. Relays are mechanical devices that wear every time they're toggled. Every time you toggle a 1 to a 0 or vice versa, you risk destroying a relay. Vacuum tubes don't have moving parts, so the wear is significantly reduced. However, when they're on, they're very hot, so their wear is related to power cycling. Every time you power the machine or power the machine off, you risk destroying a tube. Colossus was kept in a powered on state 24/7, even when not in use, despite using an ungodly amount of power. It was a measurable proportion of all of the electricity used on all of Britain during WWII. So if you never run any programs on a relay computer and keep it in a low humidity basement, it will last indefinitely. But if you use it to do stuff, you'll be diagnosing and replacing failed relays routinely. If the computer has a clockrate of 10Hz and uses reed relays (the long life kind) with a lifetime of 10 million cycles, you can expect any individual relay to last 2,000,000 seconds of continuous use. Which is about 23 days. Multiply that by 1,000 relays and you've just figured out why it takes a full time employee just to keep the machine running. Imagine a RAID array using drives with a MTBF of 23 days. Eww.
- Aardwolf 7y agoOuch!
- Animats 7y agoI wonder how much time the Living Computer Museum has left. That was a Paul Allen thing, keeping old computers alive. Unless they find a new sugar daddy, that will probably decline. Museums that keep old machines working need a large operating budget. The Smithsonian used to keep all their clocks wound and running, their piece of the ENIAC was powered on and counted up, and the Atlas Missile Guidance Computer was run regularly. None of those run any more.
- cosmodisk 7y agoA little bit off topic,but after reading this post,I texted my mum to check if they still have this: https://lady-eklipse.livejournal.com/4042.html https://lady-eklipse.livejournal.com/4042.html It's photo no.6 in the article.The thing was made in 1979..Even when I was a kid (I'm 34), my friends were amazed that I had something like this. She said she'll check if it's still somewhere in the attic!:)
- varjag 7y agoIt's super rare, hold onto it!
- noobermin 7y agoThat computer is older than him but he maintains it. I don't know, in a world where dev fads arise and die by years it's a little inspiration to see someone who maintains a multi-decade running system.
- lcfcjs2 7y agoSounds like our IT department.
- thunderrabbit 7y agoSpeaking of humming along, if you visit that site with https, they refresh to http! https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/AJ201907280007.html https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/AJ201907280007.html
- quickthrower2 7y agoAmazing. It looks like something from Dr. No.
- ezoe 7y agoRecently, I used a working typewriter. It was a very refreshing experience. It has space, tab and backspace that physically move the paper back and forth. It has shift and caps lock which physically shift the head to use the upper part of the font. The keystroke was too heavy and couldn't accept fact consecutive typing because of head jamming. Now what is remaining for me is to use the working VT100 terminal and teletype.
- noisy_boy 7y agoI learned typing on a typewriter during my college summer holidays because the general advise was that if I end-up being a total academic failure, I would be able to earn my bread by typing legal documents at the city court. I thought it was a useless idea but learned it anyway (in two languages, no less). As it happens, this came handy throughout my career (before and after I was a software developer). No matter what you do, you are much more productive on a computer, if you can type without looking at the keyboard at 70-80 wpm (not bragging because in the world of good touch typists, that is a poor score).
- timonoko 7y agoI seem to be the winner of the oldest-computer-still-in-everyday-use competition here. I have programmable TV-remote based on RCA COSMAC from 1976.
- crabl 7y agoIf you ever find yourself in Mountain View on a Saturday around 11AM, I highly recommend taking in the IBM 1401 demo that happens at the Computer History Museum: singlehandedly one of the coolest things I’ve experienced. Having the opportunity to not only see the machines in action, but to speak with the engineers who originally used them in their work was such a treat.
- rurounijones 7y agoOn a similar note for anyone who might find themselves in the UK the "National Museum of Computing" in the grounds of Bletchley Park is also a great visit https://www.tnmoc.org/ https://www.tnmoc.org/ , with the guided tour especially.
- sbuttgereit 7y agoThey also have the PDP-1 lab next door which they run on the first and third Saturdays of the month. Last visit I was able to play the original "SpaceWar!" on it and the demo was run by Steve Russell and Peter Samson. Great to see pivotal computer history that directly impacted my life as described by people directly involved in making that history.
- userbinator 7y agoIt's a relay-based computer. Basically as long as relays continue to be made (which is probably close to forever), it can still be serviced. Somewhat newer but still old computers using custom ICs that stopped being made long ago would not have as good a chance of survival, and vacuum tubes are also relatively rare. But relays are still being made, and people still build relay computers for fun, as a quick search of the Internet will show; this is one of the more memorable ones: http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~harry/Relay/ http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~harry/Relay/ There's a similar analogy to this in the automotive world, where early cars were simple and one could easily service and maintain them, even fabricating new parts as necessary; at the same time, they're nowhere near as efficient as modern equivalents.
- Animats 7y agoIt's a relay-based computer. Basically as long as relays continue to be made (which is probably close to forever), it can still be serviced. Yes. And even then, the relays can be repaired. The NYC subway system has a shop that refurbishes the relays of their signaling system. I restore old Teletype machines. The ones from the 1920s and 1930s are the easiest to restore. They're mostly all steel and cast iron. Once you clean, oil, and adjust them, they usually work, unless the machine was seriously damaged. I have five running Teletype machines. The post-WWII machines are harder, but still repairable. The ones from the 1960s and 1970s are really hard, and some of the plastic parts have to be fabricated. The last Teletype, the Teletype Model 40 (1979-1984) appears to be hopeless. The print chain deteriorates over time, and making a new print chain, with all the little character slugs, would be a huge job. Restoring current electronics, with SOIC chips, will be hopeless after the ICs wear out.
- asteli 7y agoI helped a friend-of-a-friend debug some control circuits on an ancient drill press. I wondered "why not throw a microcontroller and some SSRs in here instead of dealing with all this goofy relay logic?" Then I realized that I was servicing a 50 year old piece of equipment, which would continue to be serviceable long after Microchip stops making ATMega328s.
- sword_smith 7y agoFor my masters project in applied nuclear physics in 2013-2014, I was running the Finnish software Sampo 91 (from 1991) for analyzing gamma spectroscopy lines produced in our Germanium detector. I could get it to work on Windows 3.1 with some backwards compatibility features. It didn't run on a VM but on a physical Intel 486 machine the hospital where I was working had laying kept in store. It was a pretty nostalgic experience to set it up since the 486 was my family's first computer. I learned two things then: a lot of the basic features that we expect from an operating system already existed back then, and using old software is a lot less stressful than modern since computer's only did one thing at a time back then.
- doctorstupid 7y agoIn operation it sounds a bit like a pachinko parlor. Imagine if pachinko machines performed a useful computation, allowing the parlors to be server farms powered by gamblers.
- jackdh 7y agoIs there any translation for the video available?