Windows 3.1 brings Paris airport to a halt

SexyGreyFox

SexyGreyFox

SexyGreyFox

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ZDNet reported that November the 7th was a particularly harsh day for Paris' Orly airport. A system running Windows 3.1 called 'DECOR', something that controls a link between air traffic control and the French weather bureau, crashed and suspended all operations. There has been a promise to upgrade France's airport infrastructure by 2017 announced by the French transport minister, however, air traffic controller union executive Alexandre Fiacre thinks that it will take four or more years after this set date for things to be fully operational. To make things more confusing, this traffic control system is made up of an amalgamation of machines and operating systems, further including Windows XP and Unix.

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/48466/windows-3-1-brings-paris-airport-halt/index.html

So folks, what old systems do you know of still running important jobs?
 
Dimple said:
ZDNet reported that November the 7th was a particularly harsh day for Paris' Orly airport. A system running Windows 3.1 called 'DECOR', something that controls a link between air traffic control and the French weather bureau, crashed and suspended all operations. There has been a promise to upgrade France's airport infrastructure by 2017 announced by the French transport minister, however, air traffic controller union executive Alexandre Fiacre thinks that it will take four or more years after this set date for things to be fully operational. To make things more confusing, this traffic control system is made up of an amalgamation of machines and operating systems, further including Windows XP and Unix.

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/48466/windows-3-1-brings-paris-airport-halt/index.html

So folks, what old systems do you know of still running important jobs?
Click to expand...

Windows XP in certain Home Office buildings.
 
Was doing some inventory maintenance the other day and noticed there was a 486 PC listed! Unfortunately, there were no notes in the system and no way to check where it's at. We do have some very interesting lab equipment in the building (with controllers that aren't on the network), so it could be hidden away somewhere doing something. I don't want to dig too much....I like the idea of it sitting there, plodding along with whatever it's doing :)
 
Do IBM Power systems running code written in the times of the AS/400 count? Because if so then every bank everywhere.
 
Until recently had a machine running windows 98 that monitored a trading system and generated alerts when it went down.
 
The two servers running our main sort machines are over v17 years old, and connect to servers running SunOS 5.something
 
Quite a few nuclear power stations still use Digital PDP1184s
ATC only retired their 1184s as recently as 2005.
 
Some of our test equipment uses "PC's" from the late 60's/early 70's as the boxes they test are still in service.
 
That doesn't surprise me at all.

There does seem to be a tendency to keep very old hardware running in some situations as the cost of making compatible hardware for plant machinery, or more importantly testing the new hardware/software is so high and you can't afford to take the system down.

I remember watching something about the textile industry and steel plants and they were still using things like XT's for some machines because there was no way to interface them with newer hardware without completely replacing the interface and rewriting the software from scratch.
 
I did a lot of work for BA a while back, a few of their guys were at our test labs the other day and they still operate a lot of systems from the 70s/80s, apparently they only just got rid of one of their old mainframes, they have a system that runs on token ring, among other things - apparently it's all just worked for so long and all the people who knew how it worked all left/died, and nobody dares try to upgrade it :D
 
We've got Windows 95 machines running our switchboard software for the operators to receive and route phone calls around a decent sized healthcare organisation (they're not on Lan, but hard wired into the PABX).
 
George Hincapie said:
Windows XP on the new Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers.
Click to expand...

To be fair, Windows 10 would be a nightmare...

SAILOR: Incoming Exocet missile!

CORTANA: Search results for "budget meal ideas for family of 3"

SAILOR: AHHHH - NOOOOOO

CORTANA: Reminder set for "CALL JOHN ON 11/19 RE: birthday pub crawl"

SAILOR: WTF!!!!! NO!

etc, etc.
 
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