Windows 3.1 brings Paris airport to a halt

Orionaut said:
I wonder what they run on the ISS?

(Possibly Linux or Bespoke at a guess, but I really dont know, anybody know off hand?)
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there was a great article i believe on gizmodo or possibly io9 where a former astronaut was talking about what day to day life was like on the ISS and breaking down pictures. In one such picture they were discussing what software was used and what it did
 
we have some old analytical equipment on win3.1 - the software doesn't exist any more and wouldn't work on anything newer.

even have some old machines with their own data station pre-windows.
 
One of the ship's I worked on, despite being built in 2012, had old Pentium 4 PC's with Windows XP running ACONIS, which was the control system installed by the shipyard. It had a nasty habit of 'blue screen of deathing' just as the heavy fuel oil transfer pump was automatically cutting in on a float switch to top up the HFO settling tank, which meant that the remote controlled electro-hydraulic bunker tanker valves, deep down in the bowels of the ship would close by default.

Now this doesn't sound so dramatic, but as a float switch had triggered the transfer pump, it'd start running, dry, and as the pump was a mono pump (think of a steel rotor in a rubber stator), it had the potential to burn out the stator, and as we didn't have spare parts, we wouldn't be able to repair it, meaning we'd have no means to transfer fuel from the storage bunker tanks to the settling tanks, so once what was in the tank was used, we'd lose all power, including the main engine and generators.... While we're passing the coast of Somalia. :eek:

The only think you could do in that situation was to burst out of the control room and hurtle down several decks to the transfer pump itself and open the breaker to stop it, and pray you were fast enough to prevent it suffering damage from being ran dry.
 
thedoc46 said:
Stephen Hawkins voice synthesizer is still from the 80's
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Actually it's not anymore. IBM upgraded it substantially in the last couple of years. Despite the option of a much more natural voice, he chose to have them recreate the old voice as that is the one that people recognise. I think it came up in an AMA on reddit.
 
Local ATM is still indeed an XPE system running on a PIII 500.
Still on XP in the office here - the old version of Dymo Label I use won't work properly on 7.

McDonald's are still on XPE too, usually P4 2.4GHz units.
 
nst68 said:
I'm still writing code in Cobol :eek: :D
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And probably going through a keyboard a month.. <spacebar> <spacebar> ...

We did COBOL at uni for one lesson to understand different languages - because we used VI or a standard text editor.. it meant indenting loops with the space bar.. that is my resounding memory of COBOL. :D

Fortran77 and 90 on the other hand.. we did numerical computation and the gotcha in the fortran exam was "Remember to initialise the GINO library with the precision required". I passed :)
 
The Funktopus said:
One of the ship's I worked on, despite being built in 2012, had old Pentium 4 PC's with Windows XP running ACONIS, which was the control system installed by the shipyard. It had a nasty habit of 'blue screen of deathing' just as the heavy fuel oil transfer pump was automatically cutting in on a float switch to top up the HFO settling tank, which meant that the remote controlled electro-hydraulic bunker tanker valves, deep down in the bowels of the ship would close by default.
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Can't remember if it was the ferry or hovercraft but I remember crossing the channel a good few years back now and as I past the bridge noticed one of the systems was sitting there on the good old Windows BSOD.

EDIT: Think it was the Normandie Express - don't think you can see into the bridge on the ferries.

nst68 said:
I'm still writing code in Cobol :eek: :D
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I don't envy you but its an interesting language some real eccentricities like the line length limit.
 
Werewolf said:
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.
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I believe PDP8 architecture was popular in CNC machines until comparatively recently (it was 12 bit which was just right for machining tolerances)

PDP8 on a chip is still available today!
 
nst68 said:
I'm still writing code in Cobol :eek: :D
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I really enjoyed Cobol when I was doing my NC, HNC and HND in Computing in the early 90's, Also did a bit Pascal and C++, I wished I had stuck at programming instead of going down the IT support roles that I chose and currently stuck in :(

At my work until recently we had very old PC's running QNX version 2, And we were asked to virtualise them before we move to new offices, Ended up setting up a test QNX Version 4 virtual PC.
 
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Curio said:
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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E: WHAT JUST HAPPENED???
 
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