6 ms·

If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It: Ancient Computers in Use Today (2012)

70 points by pmarin 12y ago

betterunix 12y ago
Even more amazing is that there are still a few 19th century steam engines being used: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corliss_steam_engine#List_of_operational_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corliss_steam_engine#List_of_o...
- seekingtruth 12y ago
  Mechanicville, NY 3 Phase Hydroelectric Plant built in 1897 and still running the original generators: http://edisontechcenter.org/Mechanicville.html http://edisontechcenter.org/Mechanicville.html
throwawayaway 12y ago
> Today, he simply connects a serial port between the CoCo and a PC, with the PC acting as a virtual disk drive emulator. From the third page, I find this fascinating - does anybody know more about it? Is it an FTP or something else? EDIT: here's his website, http://users.axess.com/twilight/sock/ http://users.axess.com/twilight/sock/
- jarcane 12y ago
  It's DriveWire4: https://sites.google.com/site/drivewire4/ https://sites.google.com/site/drivewire4/
  - throwawayaway 12y ago
    very interesting that it supports osx as there are so few modern apple computers that have any way of using an rs232 port, I think the last macbook pro with an express card slot was released in 2011. perhaps a usb to rs232 is used.
    - fredoralive 12y ago
      It must require an Xserve, they had serial ports. :-) (But more seriously, USB->Serial converters work with Mac OS X, I used one to connect a Palm m105 to a G3 iBook running Mac OS X 10.1 way back when. More currently, it seems the OS itself ships with drivers for FTDI's converter chips nowadays, although I haven't used that capability).
    - jarcane 12y ago
      It supports TCP/IP as well, and with OS-9 I think at least it's possible to connect to that directly using a serial-to-LAN bridge. It also supports local IP connections as well, which makes it useful for emulators, as DriveWire is much more capable and featureful than simply loading disk images.
    - spogbiper 12y ago
      Most people use usb-serial adapters whether on Mac, Windows or Linux. Source: I wrote it ;)
Animats 12y ago
The IBM 402 has been at the Computer Museum for several years.
- christiangenco 12y ago
  So has the iPhone.
VLM 12y ago
Its a three year old article, I wonder if the unit record equipment user has changed anything, other followups, etc. Much like the list of steam engine users, giving antique users free publicity guarantees that they'll do anything to make sure they do not upgrade. Even if they have to remove the boiler and rotate the steam engine by electric motor, or have to run the books on the URE and in quickbooks, they'll "have to" do it for publicity.
- fennecfoxen 12y ago
  I don't think most of these people get their paying customers from this sort of publicity.
diminoten 12y ago
> Replacing these old systems with modern machines, she explains, would cost millions of dollars and could potentially disrupt national security. My god... The private companies who aren't willing to save money by switching are one thing (apparently the market is okay with slow store management), but the US and British governments? That's very scary.
- Roboprog 12y ago
  Remember the story about running a navy ship on Windows NT? Fool me twice... I don't blame them for sticking with the DEC stuff :-)
  - tzs 12y ago
    Old DEC computers would have done exactly the same thing NT did on that ship, which is also exactly the same thing current Windows, Linux, and OS X systems do. The problem they had was that someone entered a zero in a form field that was not allowed to be zero. The application that received this zero used it as the denominator in a divide, and so incurred a divide by zero exception. That application did not have a divide by zero handler, and so NT did the same thing pretty much every operating system does in that case, and it killed the application. That application happened to be vital for engine operation, and so the ship was dead in the water and had to be towed to port. It might seem shocking that they did not enforce important rules like "this field cannot be zero" on the data entry form, or that they did not handle divide by zero exceptions in a mission critical application (or at least have a procedure for restarting the application if it died), but this ship was a testbed for experimental software so maybe those things get added later, once they have determined that the new system works well enough to continue developing? At least, I hope it was something like that, and not something like the subcontractor who did the data entry terminals thought the application would do the data validation, and the subcontractor who did the application thought the terminals would do it.
    - tedunangst 12y ago
      But see, if they'd been using Linux, they would have had the kernel source and they could have patched the SIGFPE handler to do a virtual longjmp back to the part of the program that did form entry.
ourmandave 12y ago
If anything does break you can use your modern 3D printer to make hard-to-find replacement parts. Everything new is old again. o_O
- Sanddancer 12y ago
  There are some things where 3D printing is not an option, especially oldschool wire wrap backplanes. If you can get a 3d printer to create a rig that can print the functional equivalent of http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Computerplatine_Wire-wrap_backplane_detail_Z80_Doppel-Europa-Format_1977.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Computerp... , I will eat my hat.
  - fennecfoxen 12y ago
    Functionally equivalent? ... why couldn't you just design a PCB that's pinout-compatible?
    - Sanddancer 12y ago
      Parent had mentioned 3d printer. Of course using a modern pcb layout program would be the right tool for the job, as well as a good psychologist to deal with the madness that follows from tracing all those wires. Then again, I guess one could potentially rig up a program that took gerber files for a many layered pcb design and have it output a 3d model for forming a chunk of multilayer plastic circuit board. You'd need a printer that has multiple heads for depositing conductive materials though. I'd question its reliability in such an environment as an old mini though.
  - kw71 12y ago
    Some boards like this were assembled with the help of CNC wire wrap equipment. I don't think they were fully automated - more like the computer positioned the tools for the operator. On a board with thousands of wires, this eliminated some operator error (he didn't have to follow a list of connections on a sheet of paper anymore.)
adamio 12y ago
I'd like to know about people still using ancient computers that suck. Like a guy still struggling with an eMachines iMac clone running Windows ME, or a company using a drowning mainframe with an army of legacy coders constantly plugging the leaking holes, or nightmare layers of integration
- guard-of-terra 12y ago
  I guess you can find a lot of that on TheDailyWTF.
- wldcordeiro 12y ago
  I don't have personal knowledge of the mainframes in use at my employer but we might qualify based on talking to the coders that work on the mainframes.
abruzzi 12y ago
Im a dabbling electronic musician, so I understand a lot about keeping very old technology functional in the modern world. A lot of these old synths (all mine are digital synths) are irreplaceable with newer technology. My stuff goes as far back as the mid 80s, but there are people that restore and maintain even older hardware. Recently a synth tech restored a couple of Crumar GDSs. These were CPM based S100 bus computers with audio synthesis cards and a program that let you design sounds using a terminal interface, they play them with a music keyboard. These old synths are very difficult to keep going compared to something like a MiniMoog from the same era, because they are dependant on software, 8" floppies, and operating systems and terminals far out of common usage. Nonetheless this is a pretty amazing machine, and a very cool restoration: http://www.vintagesynth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=77037 http://www.vintagesynth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=77037
fit2rule 12y ago
My kids are using our 8-bit battlestation to learn computing. Its excellent - far better than giving them an rPi, which they just get frustrated with. Turn on the old Oric Atmos machine, boot up a disk full of software, have a great afternoon. I do get a bit tired of the ol' "10 PING : GOTO 10" trick, though .. ;)

70 points by pmarin 12y ago

Even more amazing is that there are still a few 19th century steam engines being used: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corliss_steam_engine#List_of_operational_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corliss_steam_engine#List_of_o...

seekingtruth 12y ago
Mechanicville, NY 3 Phase Hydroelectric Plant built in 1897 and still running the original generators: http://edisontechcenter.org/Mechanicville.html http://edisontechcenter.org/Mechanicville.html

throwawayaway 12y ago

> Today, he simply connects a serial port between the CoCo and a PC, with the PC acting as a virtual disk drive emulator. From the third page, I find this fascinating - does anybody know more about it? Is it an FTP or something else? EDIT: here's his website, http://users.axess.com/twilight/sock/ http://users.axess.com/twilight/sock/

jarcane 12y ago
It's DriveWire4: https://sites.google.com/site/drivewire4/ https://sites.google.com/site/drivewire4/
- throwawayaway 12y ago
  very interesting that it supports osx as there are so few modern apple computers that have any way of using an rs232 port, I think the last macbook pro with an express card slot was released in 2011. perhaps a usb to rs232 is used.
  - fredoralive 12y ago
    It must require an Xserve, they had serial ports. :-) (But more seriously, USB->Serial converters work with Mac OS X, I used one to connect a Palm m105 to a G3 iBook running Mac OS X 10.1 way back when. More currently, it seems the OS itself ships with drivers for FTDI's converter chips nowadays, although I haven't used that capability).
  - jarcane 12y ago
    It supports TCP/IP as well, and with OS-9 I think at least it's possible to connect to that directly using a serial-to-LAN bridge. It also supports local IP connections as well, which makes it useful for emulators, as DriveWire is much more capable and featureful than simply loading disk images.
  - spogbiper 12y ago
    Most people use usb-serial adapters whether on Mac, Windows or Linux. Source: I wrote it ;)

Animats 12y ago

The IBM 402 has been at the Computer Museum for several years.

christiangenco 12y ago
So has the iPhone.

VLM 12y ago

Its a three year old article, I wonder if the unit record equipment user has changed anything, other followups, etc. Much like the list of steam engine users, giving antique users free publicity guarantees that they'll do anything to make sure they do not upgrade. Even if they have to remove the boiler and rotate the steam engine by electric motor, or have to run the books on the URE and in quickbooks, they'll "have to" do it for publicity.

fennecfoxen 12y ago
I don't think most of these people get their paying customers from this sort of publicity.

diminoten 12y ago

> Replacing these old systems with modern machines, she explains, would cost millions of dollars and could potentially disrupt national security. My god... The private companies who aren't willing to save money by switching are one thing (apparently the market is okay with slow store management), but the US and British governments? That's very scary.

Roboprog 12y ago
Remember the story about running a navy ship on Windows NT? Fool me twice... I don't blame them for sticking with the DEC stuff :-)
- tzs 12y ago
  Old DEC computers would have done exactly the same thing NT did on that ship, which is also exactly the same thing current Windows, Linux, and OS X systems do. The problem they had was that someone entered a zero in a form field that was not allowed to be zero. The application that received this zero used it as the denominator in a divide, and so incurred a divide by zero exception. That application did not have a divide by zero handler, and so NT did the same thing pretty much every operating system does in that case, and it killed the application. That application happened to be vital for engine operation, and so the ship was dead in the water and had to be towed to port. It might seem shocking that they did not enforce important rules like "this field cannot be zero" on the data entry form, or that they did not handle divide by zero exceptions in a mission critical application (or at least have a procedure for restarting the application if it died), but this ship was a testbed for experimental software so maybe those things get added later, once they have determined that the new system works well enough to continue developing? At least, I hope it was something like that, and not something like the subcontractor who did the data entry terminals thought the application would do the data validation, and the subcontractor who did the application thought the terminals would do it.
  - tedunangst 12y ago
    But see, if they'd been using Linux, they would have had the kernel source and they could have patched the SIGFPE handler to do a virtual longjmp back to the part of the program that did form entry.

ourmandave 12y ago

If anything does break you can use your modern 3D printer to make hard-to-find replacement parts. Everything new is old again. o_O

Sanddancer 12y ago
There are some things where 3D printing is not an option, especially oldschool wire wrap backplanes. If you can get a 3d printer to create a rig that can print the functional equivalent of http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Computerplatine_Wire-wrap_backplane_detail_Z80_Doppel-Europa-Format_1977.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Computerp... , I will eat my hat.
- fennecfoxen 12y ago
  Functionally equivalent? ... why couldn't you just design a PCB that's pinout-compatible?
  - Sanddancer 12y ago
    Parent had mentioned 3d printer. Of course using a modern pcb layout program would be the right tool for the job, as well as a good psychologist to deal with the madness that follows from tracing all those wires. Then again, I guess one could potentially rig up a program that took gerber files for a many layered pcb design and have it output a 3d model for forming a chunk of multilayer plastic circuit board. You'd need a printer that has multiple heads for depositing conductive materials though. I'd question its reliability in such an environment as an old mini though.
- kw71 12y ago
  Some boards like this were assembled with the help of CNC wire wrap equipment. I don't think they were fully automated - more like the computer positioned the tools for the operator. On a board with thousands of wires, this eliminated some operator error (he didn't have to follow a list of connections on a sheet of paper anymore.)

adamio 12y ago

I'd like to know about people still using ancient computers that suck. Like a guy still struggling with an eMachines iMac clone running Windows ME, or a company using a drowning mainframe with an army of legacy coders constantly plugging the leaking holes, or nightmare layers of integration

guard-of-terra 12y ago
I guess you can find a lot of that on TheDailyWTF.
wldcordeiro 12y ago
I don't have personal knowledge of the mainframes in use at my employer but we might qualify based on talking to the coders that work on the mainframes.

abruzzi 12y ago

Im a dabbling electronic musician, so I understand a lot about keeping very old technology functional in the modern world. A lot of these old synths (all mine are digital synths) are irreplaceable with newer technology. My stuff goes as far back as the mid 80s, but there are people that restore and maintain even older hardware. Recently a synth tech restored a couple of Crumar GDSs. These were CPM based S100 bus computers with audio synthesis cards and a program that let you design sounds using a terminal interface, they play them with a music keyboard. These old synths are very difficult to keep going compared to something like a MiniMoog from the same era, because they are dependant on software, 8" floppies, and operating systems and terminals far out of common usage. Nonetheless this is a pretty amazing machine, and a very cool restoration: http://www.vintagesynth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=77037 http://www.vintagesynth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=77037

fit2rule 12y ago

My kids are using our 8-bit battlestation to learn computing. Its excellent - far better than giving them an rPi, which they just get frustrated with. Turn on the old Oric Atmos machine, boot up a disk full of software, have a great afternoon. I do get a bit tired of the ol' "10 PING : GOTO 10" trick, though .. ;)