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In grad school (07-13) at a top 10 engineering school world wide some of the fanciest equipment in the department (microscopes?) ran connected to windows 3.1 ma

In grad school (07-13) at a top 10 engineering school world wide some of the fanciest equipment in the department (microscopes?) ran connected to windows 3.1 machine. The facilities manager kept spare parts in the closet. The manufacturer had long abandoned the equipment and no alternative software was available. The equipment would cost millions to replace and what they had apparently worked great. So the 386 chugged along.

MontyCarloHall 4y ago
>The equipment would cost millions to replace I don’t buy this. Worst case scenario, the microscope talks to the PC using a proprietary hardware interface (say, an ISA card). It would cost far less than millions to hire a competent electronics engineer to reverse engineer the ISA card and the driver that talks to the ISA card, and fabricate a modern interface. Best case scenario, the microscope talks to the PC via a standard interface, and would be even cheaper to reverse, since you’d just need to worry about the software layer. On the other hand, it would truly cost millions when the aforementioned ancient interface inevitably breaks and becomes impossible to reverse engineer, necessitating purchase of a brand new microscope. >what they had apparently worked great This is the real reason: because the scope works fine right now, nobody thought it prudent to invest the tens of thousands it would take to future-proof it. Exactly like companies that prioritize short-term profits over long-term success.
- sbaiddn 4y ago
  Lets say it costs 100k to reverse engineer a card, drivers, and software (I doubt it will stay on budget, I see how the software industry operates. The Uni will probably get hooked on SaS contract) So now the department is down 100k for a hack. Does the hack even work? Probably not. The "engineer" probable over sold himself and got hired anyway because of the talent shortage. So the uni is down $100k, the system chugs along with Win3.1 just fine, and every research group understand that when it finally breaks they'll all have to pitch in for a new one. Btw, as to your comment on this department's myopia, the university is top 10. The department is top 5 world wide.
  - MontyCarloHall 4y ago
    >So now the department is down 100k for a hack. Does the hack even work? Probably not. The "engineer" probable over sold himself and got hired anyway because of the talent shortage. It seems disingenuous to assume the absolute worst case scenario is what will inevitably happen. The best case scenario is equally likely IMO: a reverse engineering genius undergrad will create a robust modern interface as part of a summer research project in the lab. >Btw, as to your comment on this department's myopia, the university is top 10. The department is top 5 world wide. That’s an appeal to authority fallacy. Just because you’re top 10 or top 5 or number one doesn’t make you immune to mistakes. Meta and Google are both at the top of their respective industries but make boneheaded decisions all the time.
    - ehvatum 4y ago
      In the realm of top-tier laboratories: If expensive essential apparatus you don’t have is available off the shelf, you buy it or go home. If expensive essential apparatus you already have needs floppy disks or serial ports or twinax or a green screen terminal and a dot matrix printer or Indigo2 Maximum Impact with a black box hanging off the scsi port or whatever, you have a tech keep that shit running. If it breaks and would require serious PI time to manage reverse engineering and replacing components, you buy new apparatus if it exists to be bought!!! That’s what you do, or you get steamrolled by other labs that are doing research instead of running an equipment nostalgia club.
      - zozbot234 4y ago
        > you have a tech keep that shit running And the sensible way of keeping mission-critical legacy hardware running is to emulate everything that can be emulated using modern, interchangeable parts. An SD-card-based floppy drive emulator will be a lot more reliable than a decades-old combination of physical drive + floppies. An entire DOS or Windows 3.x computer can likely be replaced by modern industrial systems (also popular in the retro community) that reimplement i586 in SoC form.
    - gizajob 4y ago
RalfWausE 4y ago
Same story here: We work with a custom build machine that is controlled by an C64 mainboard... it works perfectly since forever and C64 parts will be available for the foreseeable future, so why change?
- gchadwick 4y ago
  Given its popularity in the retro community spares may continue to be available for a long time. You can already get entirely new boards and drop in replacements are appearing for the various custom and out of production chips.

MontyCarloHall 4y ago

>The equipment would cost millions to replace I don’t buy this. Worst case scenario, the microscope talks to the PC using a proprietary hardware interface (say, an ISA card). It would cost far less than millions to hire a competent electronics engineer to reverse engineer the ISA card and the driver that talks to the ISA card, and fabricate a modern interface. Best case scenario, the microscope talks to the PC via a standard interface, and would be even cheaper to reverse, since you’d just need to worry about the software layer. On the other hand, it would truly cost millions when the aforementioned ancient interface inevitably breaks and becomes impossible to reverse engineer, necessitating purchase of a brand new microscope. >what they had apparently worked great This is the real reason: because the scope works fine right now, nobody thought it prudent to invest the tens of thousands it would take to future-proof it. Exactly like companies that prioritize short-term profits over long-term success.

sbaiddn 4y ago
Lets say it costs 100k to reverse engineer a card, drivers, and software (I doubt it will stay on budget, I see how the software industry operates. The Uni will probably get hooked on SaS contract) So now the department is down 100k for a hack. Does the hack even work? Probably not. The "engineer" probable over sold himself and got hired anyway because of the talent shortage. So the uni is down $100k, the system chugs along with Win3.1 just fine, and every research group understand that when it finally breaks they'll all have to pitch in for a new one. Btw, as to your comment on this department's myopia, the university is top 10. The department is top 5 world wide.
- MontyCarloHall 4y ago
  >So now the department is down 100k for a hack. Does the hack even work? Probably not. The "engineer" probable over sold himself and got hired anyway because of the talent shortage. It seems disingenuous to assume the absolute worst case scenario is what will inevitably happen. The best case scenario is equally likely IMO: a reverse engineering genius undergrad will create a robust modern interface as part of a summer research project in the lab. >Btw, as to your comment on this department's myopia, the university is top 10. The department is top 5 world wide. That’s an appeal to authority fallacy. Just because you’re top 10 or top 5 or number one doesn’t make you immune to mistakes. Meta and Google are both at the top of their respective industries but make boneheaded decisions all the time.
  - ehvatum 4y ago
    In the realm of top-tier laboratories: If expensive essential apparatus you don’t have is available off the shelf, you buy it or go home. If expensive essential apparatus you already have needs floppy disks or serial ports or twinax or a green screen terminal and a dot matrix printer or Indigo2 Maximum Impact with a black box hanging off the scsi port or whatever, you have a tech keep that shit running. If it breaks and would require serious PI time to manage reverse engineering and replacing components, you buy new apparatus if it exists to be bought!!! That’s what you do, or you get steamrolled by other labs that are doing research instead of running an equipment nostalgia club.
    - zozbot234 4y ago
      > you have a tech keep that shit running And the sensible way of keeping mission-critical legacy hardware running is to emulate everything that can be emulated using modern, interchangeable parts. An SD-card-based floppy drive emulator will be a lot more reliable than a decades-old combination of physical drive + floppies. An entire DOS or Windows 3.x computer can likely be replaced by modern industrial systems (also popular in the retro community) that reimplement i586 in SoC form.
  - gizajob 4y ago

RalfWausE 4y ago

Same story here: We work with a custom build machine that is controlled by an C64 mainboard... it works perfectly since forever and C64 parts will be available for the foreseeable future, so why change?

gchadwick 4y ago
Given its popularity in the retro community spares may continue to be available for a long time. You can already get entirely new boards and drop in replacements are appearing for the various custom and out of production chips.