4 ms·

In a former job, I was a sysadmin at a company that does process engineering for industrial plants, and sometimes the automation/SCADA people would turn to me f

by krylon 5y ago

In a former job, I was a sysadmin at a company that does process engineering for industrial plants, and sometimes the automation/SCADA people would turn to me for help. It was very exciting to me, because a) I got to leave the back office for a short while and actually engage with a customer and b) I got to see firsthand and learn (a little, at least) about industrial plants, which was fascinating. I find history fascinating, and I have soft spot for retro/vintage technology, so I got to see and touch some interesting stuff. One customer was doing an upgrade in 2015(!!!) from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows XP (!!!). They could not go further, because they were dependent on some piece of hardware whose vendor had gone out of business, leaving behind device drivers that would not work on any Windows after XP. For this kind of customer, I think, the prospect of an operating system where those device drivers would continue to work while also supporting more recent hardware would be very attractive. Industrial installations apparently have lifetimes that are far longer than what even "enterprise" operating systems offer, and replacing that Windows NT 4.0 box with a Windows 7 box (let's not even think of anything more recent) is a huge challenge just from the technical perspective. But it gets a lot more hairy when things like certification and compliance to legal requirements come into play, where you cannot just upgrade a box from Windows XP to Windows 10, because then you lose your certification, and re-certifying the installation is a costly and (I assume) tedious procedure. TL;DR: I believe there could be pretty lucrative market for ReactOS in industrial applications. It would require a fair amount of up-front capital to get going, but if you can provide support for large-scale industrial customer to keep their systems running for twenty or forty years, there has got to be a lot of money in it.

oneplane 5y ago
At some point I'd imagine that requiring the source code for such critical components for a long-lived machine is going to be the only sustainable way forward. At this point you'd end up reverse engineering device drivers or using 'unsupported' configurations to keep going. Of course the fact that a company that no longer exists can't support such a configuration doesn't matter because they aren't there anymore to care about any of it.
- kk6mrp 5y ago
  Does management really understand how long the equipment is going to be used when it is purchased? From what I've seen, upper management has done the cost analysis before purchasing but maintenance is going to ultimately going to be be responsible for keeping the equipment running. By this point in time, those that approved the purchase are likely retired.
  - stinkytaco 5y ago
    I'm not sure what an acceptable time horizon for these types of things is in an industrial setting, but as a middle aged person in management, I'd consider anything that lasts until after I retire a success. I don't deal a lot in mechanical systems, however, but I can certainly see someone who's not fully versed in a technology thinking 20-30 years is a longer lifespan than almost anything they interact with on a daily basis. What is the expected lifespan of system with a microchip that presumably needs to be updated, secured, etc on a regular basis?
    - liketochill 5y ago
      I am currently working on a power plant control system that has a modicon 984 plc first released in 1991. We expect minimum 20 years from PLCs, and unless parts become unavailable or failures too frequent we would generally go 30 years before replacement. The PLCs are great, it’s the damned computers and their operating systems that keep needlessly changing our working system. So we virtualize and air gap.
      - MisterTea 5y ago
        > The PLCs are great, it’s the damned computers and their operating systems that keep needlessly changing our working system. That's my gripe these days, long term used to be 20+ years. You can still get DL400 series PLC's from Automation Direct (rebranded Koyo) which are from the 90's. Now I see many embedded micros and processors advertised with 10 year long term supply. To me long term is around 20 or more years, basically someones career span. And dont get me started on all this industry 4.0 PC based control crap. Not everything needs millions of lines of Linux kernel to turn a few io points on or off. And the bloated systems that these platforms utilize is nauseating.

by krylon 5y ago

oneplane 5y ago

At some point I'd imagine that requiring the source code for such critical components for a long-lived machine is going to be the only sustainable way forward. At this point you'd end up reverse engineering device drivers or using 'unsupported' configurations to keep going. Of course the fact that a company that no longer exists can't support such a configuration doesn't matter because they aren't there anymore to care about any of it.

kk6mrp 5y ago
Does management really understand how long the equipment is going to be used when it is purchased? From what I've seen, upper management has done the cost analysis before purchasing but maintenance is going to ultimately going to be be responsible for keeping the equipment running. By this point in time, those that approved the purchase are likely retired.
- stinkytaco 5y ago
  I'm not sure what an acceptable time horizon for these types of things is in an industrial setting, but as a middle aged person in management, I'd consider anything that lasts until after I retire a success. I don't deal a lot in mechanical systems, however, but I can certainly see someone who's not fully versed in a technology thinking 20-30 years is a longer lifespan than almost anything they interact with on a daily basis. What is the expected lifespan of system with a microchip that presumably needs to be updated, secured, etc on a regular basis?
  - liketochill 5y ago
    I am currently working on a power plant control system that has a modicon 984 plc first released in 1991. We expect minimum 20 years from PLCs, and unless parts become unavailable or failures too frequent we would generally go 30 years before replacement. The PLCs are great, it’s the damned computers and their operating systems that keep needlessly changing our working system. So we virtualize and air gap.
    - MisterTea 5y ago
      > The PLCs are great, it’s the damned computers and their operating systems that keep needlessly changing our working system. That's my gripe these days, long term used to be 20+ years. You can still get DL400 series PLC's from Automation Direct (rebranded Koyo) which are from the 90's. Now I see many embedded micros and processors advertised with 10 year long term supply. To me long term is around 20 or more years, basically someones career span. And dont get me started on all this industry 4.0 PC based control crap. Not everything needs millions of lines of Linux kernel to turn a few io points on or off. And the bloated systems that these platforms utilize is nauseating.