10 ms·
Seattle's University Bridge still operates on Compaq 8080 and 5.25" Floppy disks
- timr 13y ago"you probably would have assumed there were sophisticated systems at work." That bridge was built at the turn of the century. I'm surprised to hear there's a computer involved at all.
- keithpeter 13y agoIn my childhood, I used to go and watch the four bridges [1] opening and closing in sync. All done by chaps in caps pressing buttons. I imagine the reason for electronic control is to remove the need for chaps. Still causes travel problems [2] even in the reduced state of the docks today. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Float http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Float scroll down to bridges section [2] http://www.wirralglobe.co.uk/news/10988354.Wirral_bridge_to_be_closed_for_urgent_repairs/ http://www.wirralglobe.co.uk/news/10988354.Wirral_bridge_to_... To enjoy the full flavour of our local politics, you need to read the comment on this article. The one written in block capitals (purple font colour isn't possible on the Wallasey Globe commenting system)
- timr 13y agoYeah, this particular canal has two bridges that have to open in fairly short sequence (the University and the Montlake), and I'd always assumed that it was done by a guys pressing buttons in a booth that triggered some sort of relay system. Given the presence of the guys and the booths, the age of the bridges and the generally conservative nature of civil engineering, I'm pretty surprised that there's any computer involved in the process at all, let alone one from the early days of personal computers.
- chronomex 13y agoIt is a guy in a booth. The computer is used to time the whole process and make sure that the right events occur in the right sequence, but it's still human-supervised. Before the 1980s, it was done manually with switches from the control tower.
- caf 13y agoWasn't the turn of the century only 14 years ago?
- vaadu 13y ago2001
- timr 13y agoTouché. Just used that phrase out of habit. I was (hopefully obviously) referring to the century prior.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoI enjoy referring to DEC and CP/M machines as turn of the century computers :-). But the recent turn has left us with a linguistic equivalent to the Y2K problem, which in itself is amusing in its own sort of way. :-)
- tootie 13y agoTurn of a century.
- nostromo 13y agoThe original article is much more interesting and informative: http://blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2014/03/seattles-university-bridge-undergoing-a-reboot/ http://blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2014/03/seattles-univers... It also includes a picture of the computer: http://i.imgur.com/oK0eknm.jpg http://i.imgur.com/oK0eknm.jpg
- flomo 13y agoAppears to be a Compaq Portable II, which is a 286 PC clone, not an 8080. http://oldcomputers.net/compaqii.html http://oldcomputers.net/compaqii.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Portable_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Portable_II
- greenyoda 13y agoYeah, 8080s never ran MS-DOS. The original IBM PC, for which MS-DOS was written, had an 8088 procesor.
- ZanyProgrammer 13y agoThe original Compaq Portable that my family had growing up ran Compaq DOS, IIRC.
- michaelhoffman 13y agoYes, but it had an 8088, not an 8080.
- tumba 13y agoI suspect it is actually a Portable Plus. I've got one and it has an 8088 processor along with the dual floppy drives shown in the picture.
- firat 13y agodat keyboard.
- joshu 13y agoblog spam.
- Cthulhu_ 13y agoclick 'flag' button
- egil 13y ago"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." - Bert Lance
- ivanca 13y ago"If it ain't broke you still have to upgrade, because delay in doing so will bring compatibly nightmares upon you" - Ivanca
- EpicEng 13y agoCompatibility with what? It's not being upgraded because it works. There's a reason that most POS systems still look like something out of Tron. They work, they're battle hardened, and they're fast. Upgrade to some new system and only if you're a glutton for pain (unless you have to absolutely change systems for some reason, then you're just forced to be in pain for a while.)
- ghayes 13y agoand when a component breaks?
- RamiK 13y agoMore so considering the city might want to close down the bridge (eh... open it? lift it?!) remotely in case of an emergency. They might also want to throw in some traffic condensation sensors and cameras for security and/or tickets and so on...
- userbinator 13y agoIt wouldn't surprise me if the new system turns out to be less reliable and not last as long, due to all these added things. This isn't aerospace-level, but it's still an application where bugs can be truly dangerous (e.g. bridge attempts to open while you're driving across?) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect
- gaius 13y agoYou can still buy 5 1/4" disks, because I do.
- ezequiel-garzon 13y agoI'm curious, why do you use them instead of CDs, DVDs, external USB drives, etc?
- Blahah 13y agoCDs, DVDs and USB sticks don't fit in a 5 1/4" disk drive.
- keithpeter 13y agoExcellent answer Blahah. Now, gaius, why do you need to use a 5.25 inch floppy disc drive instead of a more recent storage medium? If the answer is something along the lines of 'because that is all the old computer can use' can you clarify if this is a retro hobby or an actual use case?
- kalleboo 13y agoEven in the "old computer" case, there are a bunch of floppy interfaces for SD/CompactFlash/etc http://www.torlus.com/floppy/ http://www.torlus.com/floppy/ http://www.sensi.org/~tnt23/megadrive/ http://www.sensi.org/~tnt23/megadrive/
- gaius 13y agoI like to see how much real work I can do on 8-bit hardware, e.g. BBC micros, VIC 20, so a bit of both. For example I plan technical dives using Buhlmann in 6502 assembler, printed on a dot matrix. Come the infocalypse, everyone will work this way.
- keithpeter 13y agogaius, I worked that way for years! BBC Master with coprocessor and all for general word processing and maths teaching. Before that an Apple II and 5.25 inch disc drive used to control the temperature of a cryostat and log data.
- kalleboo 13y agoI'm mostly surprised it's a personal computer and not a relay network like elevators were/are typically controlled by. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GevDdd_IOY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GevDdd_IOY
- Aardwolf 13y agoThe PC seems alright to me (after all, how much CPU do you need to open a bridge...), but the floppies seem a bit fragile and unreliable, they lose data pretty fast.
- DSMan195276 13y agoThat's what I'm thinking too. The fact that it's old and running MS-DOS doesn't seem like much of a big deal to me considering it's not networked and only has one job to do that it's already capable of doing. They should probably just go get a cheep IDE HDD, copy the floppy onto it and boot from there. But other then that, I don't see tons of issues. This does however seem like a fairly obvious use-case for an embedded solution. No floppies, no moving parts, etc.. It would last much longer then this computer will. It's not like the computer was doing much anyway (I mean, besides signaling motors, I'm not really sure what the computer was even doing).
- pantalaimon 13y agoAn IDE Flash drive would be even better, they are pretty cheap as well.
- mark-r 13y agoI had no idea IDE flash drives existed until you said so, but indeed there's quite a few. Just for situations such as this probably.
- gaius 13y agoI used to work on a Unix system with the OS on one floppy drive and the swap file on the other.
- tanzam75 13y ago> The PC seems alright to me (after all, how much CPU do you need to open a bridge...), but the floppies seem a bit fragile and unreliable, they lose data pretty fast. Floppy disks are fragile, but consider the application. They're not trying to archive data for 100 years. They just need to be able to load the bridge control program when the computer boots up. If a floppy disk fails, just take it out and insert a duplicate. There are textile mills that are still running their machines off 3.5" floppies. When they heard that Sony ended production of 3.5" floppies, they simply went out and bought the last production run. Put them in climate-controlled storage, and they had enough to use for the remaining life of their machines.
- gtirloni 13y agoDoes anyone know what they are going to replace it with? Please tell me it's not a desktop computer again, with rotating disks, fans and all those lovely things that, you know, fail constantly.
- laichzeit0 13y agoBetter to replace it with an embedded controller with no moving parts. Buy a couple of these and flash them with the same firmware and replace the whole thing if it ever dies.
- dugmartin 13y agoIn the early 90s I saw a control system for a destructive ammunition test center being run by a TRS-80 Color Computer I. They wanted to know if I could update the software and handed me a thick greenbar printout of assembly code. I didn't take the gig.
- jhallenworld 13y agoWhat? And pass up the joy of writing 6809 assembly language? (well aside for the 6809, the Color Computer was terrible).
- bryanlarsen 13y agoOS-9 was another of the non-terrible things about the CoCo. It probably wasn't running OS-9, though.
- jarrett 13y agoMuch of our infrastructure runs on old computers. That's not necessarily bad. Assuming there's no network connection, configs are left unchanged, and updates are not installed, neither bitrot nor vulnerabilities will bring down the system. A hardware failure could, if compatible replacements aren't available. The latter does occur. Part of the reason for keeping these old systems is the risk in upgrading. The software has been in service for years so it's relatively battle-tested. New software comes with the risk of bugs and deployment problems. Bugs and deployment problems can mean lengthy shutdowns of critical infrastructure (if it proves impossible to bring the old system back into service as an emergency measure). So there is some wisdom in letting the old systems clunk along. Up to a point, that is.
- netghost 13y agoHeh, I literally just biked over the University Bridge. If you think that's old, you should see what our transportation infrastructure (stop lights, loop detectors, etc.) run on.
- digikata 13y agoThe long term sustainment / archival aspects of this are really interesting. With the new replacement system, is the company just rebuilding it from scratch? Are there design documents or source code they have access to from the old system? Is the new company going to be required to escrow similar design elements?
- jpwgarrison 13y agoI was waiting for the U-Bridge once at about 1am, and I had another ~14 miles to ride on my bike before I got home. For about 15 minutes, the bridge would open, almost close but then stop with one side about 2 feet up. I was NOT looking forward to riding around to another bridge. Another cyclist rode up, watched one of these cycles, and then he looked over at me and shrugged, rode up and did the ~2ft drop w/o incident. I gave it about 30 seconds, looked around for cops and then went over myself. It was one of the scariest things I have done, and I was just hyper-aware for the rest of the ride home and woke up my housemates to tell them this story.
- koenigdavidmj 13y agoThe Ballard Bridge has been getting stuck more and more in recent months, it seems. And the University Bridge (or maybe it's Montlake) needs to get hosed down with water every hour on hot days, or otherwise it will expand and be unable to lift. Welcome to Seattle.
- sthu11182 13y agoI remember an old IEEE article on the NYC subway system. There were portions of the system that was built in the 1900's that still controls the tracks. The MTA was afraid of removing the old system because they had no idea how it worked.
- jcrawfordor 13y agoI got a tour of the Burnside Bridge in Portland twice when I was in probably middle school, a couple years apart. The first time, the operator had a big panel of giant switches and buttons with a relay interlock system to make sure things proceeded in the right order. The second time, the control system had been replaced by a single color LCD touchscreen with what I can only describe as the bridge opening wizard... complete with a "Next >" button.