[vcf-midatlantic] Old-school computing: when your lab PC is ancient

[Jason Perkins]

At my work we're dealing with this... $200,000 medical eye cameras, which
have control software that only works in XP or perhaps 7. The camera
maker's response is "buy a newer camera, the software comes free".

IIRC Jon Chapman's XT-IDE business came out of supporting XT and AT class
machines that were used to run production lines.

-J

On Wed, Jun 2, 2021 at 7:49 AM Neil Cherry via vcf-midatlantic <
vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

> On 6/2/21 9:07 AM, Christian Liendo via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
> > What they consider old school is rather new school for us.
> >
> > https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01431-y
> >
> > But I know there are people here running some really old active systems.
> >
>
> New school? We're teaching the classes. ;-)
>
> My friends work on the railroad, they've kept systems from the early
> 1900's running. ;-)
> Some of those contactors are beginning to wear out. They finally got
> federal funding
> that wasn't tied to 'BumFrell' Iowa for safety systems. So some of the
> systems are
> being updated.
>
> My first job was embedded systems and it was expected that those systems
> would be in
> use for 30 or 40 years. Manufacturers (smelting, concrete, etc.) had
> production
> systems that had very expensive and specialize control systems that I
> think keeps a
> few of us employed finding older systems and parts.
>
> My Smart Home stuff that's tied to the cloud scares the hell out of me. If
> the
> vendor decides that they're not making money on the cloud service and
> everything
> can become bricked (I have a way around it). But just look at Revolv
> (Google
> killed it), Wink, Staples Connect, TCP Connect, Karotz, ... all gone
> bye-bye.
>
> --
> Linux Home Automation         Neil Cherry       ncherry at linuxha.com
> http://www.linuxha.com/                         Main site
> http://linuxha.blogspot.com/                    My HA Blog
> Author of:      Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
>


-- 
Jason Perkins
313 355 0085