3 ms·

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

• 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.