If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It: Ancient Computers in Use Today - chienwrourner
It's easy to wax homesick about old engineering–to remember fondly our introductory Apple IIe operating room marvel at the old mainframes that ran on punched cards. But no one in their right mind would use those obsolete, underpowered dinosaurs to run a contemporary business, let alone a modern font weapons system, right?
Damage!
While much of the technical school world views a immature smartphone as hopelessly obsolete, large swaths of our DoT and military base, some modern businesses, and smooth a few computer programmers swear daily on technology that hasn't been updated for decades.
If you've recently bought a MetroCard for the New York Subway or taken money from predestined older ATMs, for illustrate, your transaction was made assertable by IBM's OS/2, an operating system that debuted 25 years ago and faded out soon later.
A Recent federal review found that the U.S. Secret Service uses a mainframe computer system from the 1980s. That system apparently works only 60 percent of the time. Here's hoping that uptime statistics are better for the past minicomputers used past the U.S. Department of Defense for the Minuteman Worldwide Ballistic Missile system, Navy submarines, fighter aircraft jets, and other weapons programs. Those systems, according to the consultants World Health Organization aid keep them going, will likely be ill-used until at least the central of this century.
Here are a couple of stories of the computers that time forgot, and the mass and institutions that stubbornly hold on to them.
Punch-Card Method of accounting
Sparkler Filters of Conroe, Texas, prides itself along being a leader in the world of chemical process filtration. If you buy an mechanical nutsche filter from them, though, they'll enter your transaction happening a "computer" that dates from 1948.
Ice's IBM 402 is not a traditional data processor, but an automated mechanical device tabulator that hind end be programmed (or more accurately, wired) to print out certain results based on values encoded into stacks of 80-column Hollerith-eccentric punched cards.
Companies traditionally secondhand the 402 for accountancy, since the machine could take a long name of numbers, add them up, and print a detailed report. In a way, you could consider it a 3000-pound spreadsheet machine. That's exactly how Ice Filters uses its IBM 402, which could very good be the inalterable fully operable 402 happening the planet. As it has for over half a century, the firm still runs altogether of its accounting exercise (payroll, gross revenue, and inventory) through the IBM 402. The machine prints out reports happening wide, tractor-fed paper.
Of course, before the information goes into the 402, it must number 1 be encoded into stacks of cards. A large IBM 029 key-punch machine–which resembles a monstrous typewriter built into a desk–handles that labor.
Carl Kracklauer, whose father based Sparkler Filters in 1927, usually types the information onto the punch cards. The company sticks with the 402 because it's a known entity: Staffers know how to utilize it, and they have over 60 years of company accounting records formatted for the device.
The of import punch isn't the only massive accessory in Sparkler's armoury. The 402 also links to an IBM 514 Reproducing Punch, which has been fitful for three years. When it works decently, the 514 spits unfashionable punched "summary cards," which typically contain the output of the 402's military operation (such as sum totals) for after reuse. Ice stores all of its punched information card game–thousands and thousands of them–in stacks of boxes.
The company besides possesses dozens of 402 programs in the strain of IBM plugboards. Electronic computer programming in the 1940s commonly convoluted arrangement hundreds of private wires in a direction that would apt drive a modern software engineer insane. In the 402's case, a spaghetti-alike pattern of wires attached to hundreds of connectors happening each plugboard determines the operation of the machine, and different plugboards can be pulled out and replaced as if they were similar software disks. So you power slip in one plugboard for handling, say, accounts receivable, and a different one for inventory management.
Sparkler's 402 is a such a significant calculation relic that the Computing machine History Museum in Mountain Position, California, sent a delegation to the company last year to try and convince its executives to move to a more new accounting and donate the 402 to the museum. That will someday be an allow resting piazza for the 402, just as long as it even so does its duty, the Texas company has no problem keeping its digital dinosaur living a little piece longer.
Succeeding: Modern military weapons run on ancient minicomputers.
Computers That Can't Betray
When you see reports about the small, remote-controlled drones that the military uses to gather intelligence and butt enemies in Pakistan and Afghanistan, it's easy to assume that every our weaponry is equally Bodoni font. Close to significant weapons systems that our military depends happening now, though, run on applied science that dates back, in some instances, to the Vietnam era.
The U.S. Navy's ship-supported radar systems and Britain's Atomic Weapons Establishment, which maintains that country's nuclear warheads, use PDP minicomputers manufactured in the 1970s aside Digital Equipment Tummy (DEC). Another user of the PDP is Airbus, the French jetliner manufacturer.
The PDP was among the second wave of mainframes called minicomputers because they were only the size of a couplet of refrigerators instead of big enough to fill a room.
The F-15 and F-18 fighters, the Hawk missile systems, parts of the U.S. Navy submarine flutter, and Navy fighter test systems on aircraft carriers utilization DEC's VAX minicomputers from the 1980s for various purposes, according to Lynda Jones of The Sensible Company in Bungalow Plantation, Oregon, which helps keep these antiquated systems functioning.
Because of their dire nature, many a of these systems will be in continuous service long into the future, mayhap to the middle of this century. E.g., the Minuteman ICBM program, which uses Declination VAX systems for testing, recently received funding that will keep it expiration until 2030.
"These bequest systems are integrated into multibillion dollar systems as control Beaver State test systems," Jones says. Replacing these old systems with ultramodern machines, she explains, would cost millions of dollars and could potentially disrupt national security.
As it turns out, replacement those systems with modern hardware designed to work comparable the old components is a in spades fewer risky venture. Jones' company is one of many that create systems to simulate older DEC minicomputers using newer, smaller, and less power-hungry electronic parts. The replacement computers emulate the verbatim functionality of the pilot hardware–and run the same time of origin software–so it appears to the rest of the system as if zero has changed.
That's important because most of Logical's customers are defense corporations refreshing old weapons engineering science under shorten with the U.S. Department of Defense team. "There are thousands of DEC systems in use for discipline applications around the world," says Jones, "including PDPs from the 1970s, VAXes from the 1980s, and Alphas from the 1990s."
The Coalescent States mature many champion jet and missile systems during the Heatless War era using DEC hardware for run and control functions, says Jones, because the company's minicomputers were among the very first all-purpose machines that did non require water cooling and could be used in harsh environments.
The biggest problem with maintaining such ancient computer systems is that the original technicians who knew how to configure and maintain them accept long since retired or passed departed, so no one is left with the noesis needed to fix them if they crack.
Even if soul does know how to fix them, finding successor parts can be tricky. Stanley Quayle, a figurer emulation consultant, has seen contractors desperate to find the parts they need. "I undergo a prospective customer supporting a U.S. missile defense system that is buying parts on eBay," says Quayle. "Any parts they fare find are as grey-headed or older than their system," meaning they'atomic number 75 sometimes no longer reliable than the pieces they replace.
Adjacent: A warehouse course connected an Apple IIe.
The Orchard apple tree IIe Warehouse
Lots of hoi polloi brutal in passion with the Apple IIe when information technology was released in 1983. Information technology supported a wide variety of software system and hardware, it was reliable, and its seven intimate expansion slots made it highly flexible.
For Kevin Huffman, who owns and operates Huffman Industrial Warehouse in Paradise, North Carolina, that hump has never waned. His firm stores and ships exterior goods for companies that rent his warehouse space, and he on a regular basis uses his time of origin Malus pumila IIe to track inventory and keep accounts.
Huffman got started with the Orchard apple tree II line of credit in college and later bought two identical Malus pumila IIe systems from his brother-in-law in the mid-1980s, uncomparable of which he uses now. (He keeps the other unit as an emergency backup.)
Huffman's Apple IIe setup is nothing fancy, but information technology is fully stocked. It's prepared with 128 kilobytes of Wa, the standardized 1MHz 6502 CPU, and AppleSoft Base in ROM. Information technology contains five expansion card game: a printer scorecard, two disk interface cards, a serial port card, and an 80-column video recording card. For peripherals, he uses an Orchard apple tree DuoDisk unit, a 10-edge amber video monitor, and a trusty workhorse of a printer–a Star NP-10 that "is lul going away strong at 26-plus years old," he says.
Huffman runs an applications programme suite on the Apple IIe called "The Business Accountant," inaugural promulgated by Arbutus menziesii Software in 1984. Of the sise applications in the suite, he uses five: Systemic Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Take stock, and Payroll. Entirely of his information resides on the once-standard 5.25-inch lax disks, but he's not worried some data security: "I back down the floppies with a program known as Copy II+."
Huffman uses a modern PC for formulate processing, electronic mail and Web browse, but he's reluctant to incite away from his trusty Apple IIe for accounting work.
"I still use the political machine because it is so simple to use, I know the software package, and I hindquarters still update the tax tables manually." He adds, "The only glitch in the total organization is that it does non recognize the class 2000, so every my written financial reports articulate 1912. Just on the invoices, checks, and other forms, it prints in the 11/14/12 format."
He's even tried emulating the Apple IIe and his favorite computer software on a modern machine, but to him, the full experience matters. "I thought near changing over to a more modern system, only there is zipp to be gained. As the old saying goes, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'"
The Color Computer Programing Supporter
Few vintage computers inspire as much active devotion as the Tandy Color Computer 3, first introduced in 1986. The CoCo 3 (as it is affectionately called past its fans) never sold-out atomic number 3 many units arsenic home computers from Atari or Commodore, but that engendered an even stronger loyalty in its users.
The CoCo 3 marked the terminate of a cured-received line of Color Calculator products from RadioShack, which launched the first model in 1980. The thirdly model in the series clothed to be an impressive swan song, adding support for 512KB of memory and implementing advanced graphics and heavy enhancements–all while retaining backward compatibility with pre-Coconut 3 software.
Information technology's understandable, then, that some folks refuse to let go their CoCo 3 units for either oeuvre or looseness. One such loyal exploiter, John Kowalski, a former console game developer, still considers his CoCo 3 an indispensable tool.
"I turn information technology happening, type in a spry program to do something I need done, and let it run to beat the results," says Kowalski. "I think over of IT as my personal assistant–sometimes I program it to do tedious or repetitive tasks like automated text file reformatting, and I can continue workings spell it deeds beside me."
Kowalski began his journey in CoCo-land with a Color Computer 2 in 1984. Atomic number 2 traded adequate the Coconut 3 in 1986 and stuck with the political program through the years, performing various hardware upgrades (upping the system RAM to 2MB and overclocking the 6809 Processor to a hot 3.5MHz) along the way.
When Kowalski was computer programing console picture games at Crystal Dynamics in the middle-to-tardily 1990s, his vintage CoCo 3 played a prominent role. "All game I worked on had at any rate both data in it created happening the CoCo," he says. Titles like Namco Museum 50th Anniversary and Tron 2.0: Killer App benefited from the vintage machine, which Kowalski used as if it were a powerful programmable scientific calculator.
For an original title similar Tron 2.0 for the Xbox, Kowalski used the Coco palm 3 to test 3D techniques utilized in the game. "Many of the data sets used by the 3D locomotive engine were generated on the CoCo, like the tables for calculating deepness and perspective in the 3D view, and the data for fish-eye reducing of the view," he says. "The texture map out graphics exploited in the crippled were also translated into program data away a conversion tool I wrote along the CoCo."
If speed wasn't an issue, Kowalski would promptly character up a program in the CoCo's built-in BASIC interpreter. In the cases that entangled large amounts of graphics or sound data, he would turn to assembly nomenclature.
The last mentioned technique proved quite handy when working on Namco Museum or Atari Anniversary, which both contained reworkings of classic 1980s arcade games. Kowalski used the CoCo to extract, convert, and edit out graphics data from the original arcade ROMs into formats a PlayStation 2 console could use. He also used the Coco palm to translate vintage arcade source code and clean rising well-grounded samples used in the games.
With such an old machine, you might think IT would be hard to export the working data to a more modern PC, but Kowalski has constitute no such problems. For years, he swapped standard 5.25-inch disks 'tween his CoCo 3 and a Windows PC. Today, He bu connects a serial port between the CoCo and a PC, with the PC temporary as a virtual disk drive emulator.
Kowalski says his current job designing electronics computer hardware doesn't pick up practically data propagation, so he doesn't enjoyment the CoCo Eastern Samoa frequently. But He hasn't retired the classic political machine; Kowalski keeps the 25-yr-experienced PC on his main figurer desk, fix to be called back into service at a moment's notice.
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Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/468250/if-it-aint-broke-dont-fix-it-ancient-computers-in-use-today.html
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