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I've never understood the general sense of incredulity that these sorts of news stories generate amongst the supposedly technically literate. It's almost as if

I've never understood the general sense of incredulity that these sorts of news stories generate amongst the supposedly technically literate. It's almost as if people who should know better actually expect the nuclear industry to be running on shiny new Mac Pros, or the latest-and-greatest *nix cluster.

lignuist 13y ago
When it comes to hardware, I would prefer machines that are younger than 20 years. Electronic parts can have a limited lifetime. Regarding software I propose the well tested and well understood systems.
- Sanddancer 13y ago
  Just because the architecture at this point is over 43 years old doesn't mean the individual hardware components are. There are still companies that fab pdp-11 cores, because there are a lot of places where testing and certifying new designs is more expensive than training and getting one-offs made.
- laumars 13y ago
  Coincidentally, a couple of months ago I was chatting to an engineer that had restored an old PDP11 and he was telling me about how one of the many benefits of the PDP11 is that it's surprisingly easy to source replacement parts. Many of the PDP11 part are compatible with other systems of that era and much of circuit components can be replaced with modern components.
- lucian1900 13y ago
  If the hardware did fail and they somehow couldn't find a replacement (doubtful), they could always emulate it on a newer machine.
- kryten 13y ago
  So you'd prefer a BOM for your nuclear power station controller with mostly proprietary vendor-specific parts which are obsolete after 2 years, impossible to replace or find maintenance stock for and under layers of NDAs and crappy documentation? That's the last 20 years. Or would you prefer a PDP11 made out of COTS parts (most are discrete in a basic PDP11), fully documented both hardware and software wise? "Crap my register file is suddenly losing data". Oh ok, dig out docs, look up fault diagnostics, ok bit 3 has failed, says replace TR23, TR24 in that flip flop, test it, wham it back in, sorted. Versus, throw the part away, dig around all used semiconductor resellers, pay a premium, find out it's some shitty chinese clone that doesn't work or has just been relabelled, bash your head on the wall and hire a consultant to design the entire system module from scratch again. Hmm.
  - crististm 13y ago
    ...And new capacitors that blow away. From one of the comments: "Shit that works, works. For some reason, kiddies fail to understand that simple concept." That resonated with me.
- RexRollman 13y ago
  Does it really have to run on a real PDP? Certainly modern computers can emulate a PDP easily?
- babuskov 13y ago
  Depends which parts. I still have old Amiga, C64 and Intel386. CPU's still work properly on all of them.
laumars 13y ago
Agreed. I took particular objection to the following passage: "Now that you've cleaned up the coffee spills and finished laughing" That aside, it does still make an interesting read if just to learn what systems some nuclear power plants are running. I'd love to have seen pictures of the PDP's in action though.

lignuist 13y ago

When it comes to hardware, I would prefer machines that are younger than 20 years. Electronic parts can have a limited lifetime. Regarding software I propose the well tested and well understood systems.

Sanddancer 13y ago
Just because the architecture at this point is over 43 years old doesn't mean the individual hardware components are. There are still companies that fab pdp-11 cores, because there are a lot of places where testing and certifying new designs is more expensive than training and getting one-offs made.
laumars 13y ago
Coincidentally, a couple of months ago I was chatting to an engineer that had restored an old PDP11 and he was telling me about how one of the many benefits of the PDP11 is that it's surprisingly easy to source replacement parts. Many of the PDP11 part are compatible with other systems of that era and much of circuit components can be replaced with modern components.
lucian1900 13y ago
If the hardware did fail and they somehow couldn't find a replacement (doubtful), they could always emulate it on a newer machine.
kryten 13y ago
So you'd prefer a BOM for your nuclear power station controller with mostly proprietary vendor-specific parts which are obsolete after 2 years, impossible to replace or find maintenance stock for and under layers of NDAs and crappy documentation? That's the last 20 years. Or would you prefer a PDP11 made out of COTS parts (most are discrete in a basic PDP11), fully documented both hardware and software wise? "Crap my register file is suddenly losing data". Oh ok, dig out docs, look up fault diagnostics, ok bit 3 has failed, says replace TR23, TR24 in that flip flop, test it, wham it back in, sorted. Versus, throw the part away, dig around all used semiconductor resellers, pay a premium, find out it's some shitty chinese clone that doesn't work or has just been relabelled, bash your head on the wall and hire a consultant to design the entire system module from scratch again. Hmm.
- crististm 13y ago
  ...And new capacitors that blow away. From one of the comments: "Shit that works, works. For some reason, kiddies fail to understand that simple concept." That resonated with me.
RexRollman 13y ago
Does it really have to run on a real PDP? Certainly modern computers can emulate a PDP easily?
babuskov 13y ago
Depends which parts. I still have old Amiga, C64 and Intel386. CPU's still work properly on all of them.

laumars 13y ago

Agreed. I took particular objection to the following passage: "Now that you've cleaned up the coffee spills and finished laughing" That aside, it does still make an interesting read if just to learn what systems some nuclear power plants are running. I'd love to have seen pictures of the PDP's in action though.