4 ms·

A few months of headache is probably still very much worth it. Although they aren't the only ones. Anything related to mechanical engineering is often horribly

A few months of headache is probably still very much worth it. Although they aren't the only ones. Anything related to mechanical engineering is often horribly outdated. Just recently saw a brand new device to separate waste. Allegedly one of the best in the world. The controller runs on some arcane and old version of Windows CE or something like that that is half a day before the extremely long support window from Microsoft for embedded systems. I don't think there is any technical justification for this you could just as well have used a brand new Windows 98. But jokes aside, even if the OS is still officially supported, why not choose a newer platform when starting such projects... There would be enough time to evaluate an OS.

detritus 4y ago
It might be as simple as those old OS versions supporting serial or parallel ports or whatever arcane connector the Waste Seperator requires. Ultimately, if it's a single-purpose machine-controlling-machine that is air-gapped and never requires internet or external storage access, what difference does it make what it runs?
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  Often the use case to connect such a controller is getting telemetry data from the machine. Not for waste sorting, but we have a machine to solder some parts and puts information about the items in a text file. It also runs an old Windows OS. The usual route to get process information is through a network share but the system only speaks smb1. Since we banned that protocol we now need to retrofit a small software application that just writes the data into a database. The device gets its own network segment and firewall rules and all but it still isn't completely air-gapped. All that for basically a counter on how many parts it soldered so that we have an idea about how many parts we have in storage. I think these decisions to use an old OS are mostly done because it was used for decades. Modern OS still know how to talk with serial ports. These connectors are still standard because they are much more reliable than USB for example, especially over larger distances. They are in use for any form a data that isn't audiovisual, where you need far more bandwidth.
jackvalentine 4y ago
I was asked to evaluate a new medical device recently that ran Windows CE 6.0. I genuinely didn’t know where to start.

detritus 4y ago

It might be as simple as those old OS versions supporting serial or parallel ports or whatever arcane connector the Waste Seperator requires. Ultimately, if it's a single-purpose machine-controlling-machine that is air-gapped and never requires internet or external storage access, what difference does it make what it runs?

raxxorraxor 4y ago
Often the use case to connect such a controller is getting telemetry data from the machine. Not for waste sorting, but we have a machine to solder some parts and puts information about the items in a text file. It also runs an old Windows OS. The usual route to get process information is through a network share but the system only speaks smb1. Since we banned that protocol we now need to retrofit a small software application that just writes the data into a database. The device gets its own network segment and firewall rules and all but it still isn't completely air-gapped. All that for basically a counter on how many parts it soldered so that we have an idea about how many parts we have in storage. I think these decisions to use an old OS are mostly done because it was used for decades. Modern OS still know how to talk with serial ports. These connectors are still standard because they are much more reliable than USB for example, especially over larger distances. They are in use for any form a data that isn't audiovisual, where you need far more bandwidth.

jackvalentine 4y ago

I was asked to evaluate a new medical device recently that ran Windows CE 6.0. I genuinely didn’t know where to start.