What's the Oldest Technology You've Used In a Production Environment? 620
itwbennett writes: Sometimes it's a matter of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it,' sometimes corporate inertia is to blame, but perhaps even more often what keeps old technology plugging away in businesses large and small is the sense that it does a single, specific job the way that someone wants it done. George R.R. Martin's preference for using a DOS computer running WordStar 4 to write his Song of Ice and Fire series is one such example, but so is the hospital computer whose sole job was to search and print medical images, however badly or slowly it may have done the job. We all have such stories of obsolete tech we've had to use at one point or another. What's yours?
Uhmmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Pen and paper?
Re:Uhmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes it's a matter of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it,' ,
If it ain't broke, break it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My last two jobs were both still using 3270 terminal emulators to connect to CICS [wikipedia.org] systems. I understand that's still fairly common in both government and industry.
Sperry (Score:3)
Re:Uhmmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
Aperture Punch Cards in late 80s (and CICS) (Score:3)
Aperture cards [wikipedia.org] are punch cards with a cutout for a piece of 35mm microfilm (picture [wikipedia.org]) and about 50-60 characters of indexing data. They were used in the aircraft industry to handle blueprints, because they're fairly high density - a 747 can't even hold all of its blueprints on paper, much less take off with them, and almost all large aircraft back then were unique, with slightly different parts, shapes of metal pieces, etc., due to design and manufacturing changes that happen in parallel to construction, as
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In recent days, I've used WinNT4 machines in a manufacturing environment, and there are a few machines with relay logic in our machine shop. I've heard of a handful of machines still surviving from the early 1950s to WW2 days, but they're few and far between, and mos
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They seem to only be talking about IT stuff, which is a shame, because Slashdot is much bigger than that. For awhile we were using a General Radio Megaohm Bridge that uses vacuum tubes, but I'm certain I've also run tests using a Variac from the 1950's.
As far as old IT stuff (*sigh*) up until a few years ago we were using some old Commodore SX64s to do some of the testing. Until about a year ago there were a bunch of PC-XTs at test stations out in the lab but those are gone now. The main life tests still
Re:Uhmmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Uhmmmm (Score:3)
I have a problem with that attitude - I see it all the time in work - the bordering on pride that people have when they can't use a device (especially a computer).
All he had to do is say let's use both and 1-see the difference in readings and 2-show me how it works.
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All he had to do is say let's use both and 1-see the difference in readings and 2-show me how it works.
Bold statement. Please explain how a digital ammeter gives an accurate current reading without affecting the circuit, which is what the analog setup did.
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winnt4 in production is nothing, it is often required on equipment such as HP chromatographs and other lab equipment that is otherwise top-tier (before the company was destroyed by (presidential hopeful) Carly Fiorina.
If you are looking for old production equipment, I think you'd be impressed by the DEC PDP-11s still running in nuclear power plants that have a commitment to run through 2050. http://www.vintage-computer.co... [vintage-computer.com]
Re:Uhmmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
That would be my oldest machine - the MK113 Torpedo FCS, basically a Really Fancy version of the WWII era TDC. The first entered service with USS Thresher in 1960, and the last left service when USS Kamehameha was decommissioned in 2003. Quite a run for a machine whose core functionality came from an analog computer directly descended from a 1930's design.
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I'm pretty sure the only thing that beats those in terms of age is only (officially) present at places that produce pornography.
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Oh yeah? Well at my job we have walls and a roof! Also, we wear clothes.
And they necessary to solve your problems or are they just traditional?
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Pen and paper?
Fire
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Re:Finger and Sand (Score:5, Funny)
I've cut a plastic binding with a sharp rock. I didn't knap it myself, it was naturally sharp, but... I don't think it gets much more old school than that ;) Unless there's someone here who made productive use of throwing their own excrement in a production environment.
Re: Finger and Sand (Score:5, Funny)
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I tried Windows 8 once, does that count?
Oldest? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oldest? (Score:4, Funny)
You lucky devil; we had to push our stone servers ourselves across the ground.
25+ years (Score:2)
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Similarly, I'm currently working on a system that has commits from 1980 (in Fortran, or FORTRAN as it was then, I guess).
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The question I have is, how have you been able to keep all of these commits discrete and trackable in your RCS since 1980? Have they been migrating it forward from whenever they started committing them? And exactly what were people committing into in 1980? :O
Re:25+ years (Score:5, Funny)
And exactly what were people committing into in 1980?
Crimes against fashion.
Re:25+ years (Score:4, Interesting)
And exactly what were people committing into in 1980? :O
RCS was released in 1982, but SCCS goes back to 1972. In the latter part of the 70s it was dominant and available on IBM OS/360 systems and letter on AT&T Unix System III and V. It was not terribly difficult to move data from SCCS to RCS when it moved to a dominant system.
So managing a code base going back to 1980 is not at all unreasonable.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: 25+ years (Score:2)
Do we work together?
I work with a system that uses NetBIOS networking on DOS. And not that fancy NetBIOS over TCP/IP, either.
Re: 25+ years (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, LANtastic?
I was supporting a NetWare 2.15c server with a DCB inproduction. In 2003. The 40MB drives were in addition to IDE drives internal to the server chassis, and were deemed untouchable. Separate UPS, no one believed they would spin up again if they lost power. No one ever told me what was on those drives.
Legacy system based on Fox DB (Score:5, Interesting)
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I'm working on a project to replace a legacy system that runs on Fox DB and is completely DOS based. It's so old that it can't actually be run on desktop systems without a VM because it's 8bit and all of our current systems are 64Bit.
I think you mean 16-bit. DOS was never 8-bit.
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Maybe it runs on a NES.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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MS-DOS was 8 bit for 8080/8088 in version 1, it went 16-bit for 8x86 in version 2.0 and retained backward compatibility for the 8-bit stuff.
(PC Magazine, November 1982, P.190)
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I worked on a system like that back in '83-84. I hope it's been replaced, but based on what I knew then about government IT policies, it's possible that it's still in use.
It used Foxpro to query a DB on as AS400, and use the data to "print" a plastic licence card, using an embossed wheel - kind of like a daisy wheel printer. The printer was primitive, with very little on-board memory, so the the print jobs had to be spooled entirely on the PC. The printer's on board software was also primitive, and we had t
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I hope it's been replaced, but based on what I knew then about government IT policies, it's possible that it's still in use.
I'm pretty sure my states' turnpike still uses PDP-11s to process tolls. DEC has been gone for at least 20 years so I have no idea what they do when they need service.
Old? You want old? (Score:3)
Do fire and wheels count?
"You punks had water?!? We had to get our own oxygen and hydrogen atoms and smash them together before we could walk uphill both ways in a snowstorm!"
Borland Pascal (Score:2)
Me. (Score:2)
In my last job, the oldest piece of technology they had was... ME. =P
And it (me) did very well, indeed. =D
DNS server (Score:2)
Sharp PC-1401 (Score:2)
Serial RS-232 port (Score:4, Interesting)
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Serial?
Old?
Bah!
If my instruments have Serial it's high tech. Most of them use IEEE-488, and I'm controlling them with a HP-226.
That's this badboy right here: http://www.hpmuseum.net/upload... [hpmuseum.net]
Re: Serial RS-232 port (Score:2)
If you don't call it HP-IB, it ain't that old...
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i never really looked into it. always thought 232 was the newer.
Maybe the question should be... (Score:5, Insightful)
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...relative to when you used it?
I had to use a DOS 3.3 PC off and on in a "production" capacity, but this was in 1992 when it was only 5 years old. My desktop PC at home is Server 2008r2 and it least in simple terms, it's actually older technology.
I still run into Windows 2000, which is like 15 years old but doesn't seem old.
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I use neural networks on a daily basis based on a very old design. There have been a few tweaks along the way, but still basically in continuous use: http://scienceblogs.com/neurop... [scienceblogs.com]
That's 600 Mya.
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The 8051 is still alive and kicking, mostly because it's cheap and easily available. Using a chip now that I think uses an 8051 internally to run a Java VM; incredibly slowly of course.
Not obsolete if it meets specs (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not obsolete if it's still capable of performing its function within specifications.
The ability to *alter* it to match *new* specifications should be taken into account (if it's written in a language no one speaks any more), but that doesn't prevent it from functioning.
Systems that have to deal with altered specifications because the environment around (physical or virtual) them changes can become obsolete faster than systems that are disconnected from their environment.
Note: That's an excellent reason to keep your systems disconnected from the environment.
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Flat file database with a COBOL front end.
Modems, serial, dumb terminals (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to work at a place that handled paging (like, literal TNPP and TAP paging) and we had Digi serial multiplexers with 24 serial ports for connecting to 24 individual modems for paging, fax, and other low-speed services. There were lots of customers still using that technology too; we tried to migrate to Equinox and their digital modems (basically a T1 that emulated 24 modems) but they had trouble with extremely short-length low-baud connections causing lockups. It was literally better to have a huge room full of equipment because it wouldn't crash instead of a single rack full of PCI cards that would constantly have port errors.
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We still have operational gear running at 110 baud.
Granted, it's being emulated over 2400 baud satellite networks, but the physical hardware can't go any faster than 110.
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Re: Modems, serial, dumb terminals (Score:2)
Even today many dial credit card terminals connect at 300 baud.
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LISP interpretor from Texas Instruments (Score:2)
old tech (Score:2)
The oldest I have used is a wedge, while producing fire wood.
SCO Unix... (Score:4, Interesting)
SCO Unix runs GREAT inside of VMWare... don't ask me how I know this, as I get back to the server room to beat the shit out of some random OS that isn't performing well... again....
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Morse Code (Score:5, Interesting)
I lobbied to end the requirement for an examination of the ability to decode Morse code with your ear and brain. Until 2007, the U.S. Federal Government required it before they would license all but the lowest grade of Amateur Radio hobbyists.
As part of my lobbying effort, I successfully passed a test for receiving code at 20 words per minute, and then subsequently refused to use the code on the air. 20 WPM is so fast that you have to decode by the sound of each character, you don't have enough time to pick out the individual dots and dashes.
We won.
Re:Morse Code (Score:5, Informative)
Until 2007, the U.S. Federal Government required it before they would license all but the lowest grade of Amateur Radio hobbyists.
1. The novice class license had a Morse code requirement. That was the lowest grade of amateur radio license. Five WPM.
2. The Morse code requirement was mandated by the ITU treaty (International Telecommunications Union) that required anyone who had access to HF bands (that included Novice class amateur radio licensees) to know Morse code. That requirement was based on maritime safety, as an ability to read CW could help during emergencies. Satellite and other systems have replaced the old radio op sending the weak SOS signal from a sinking vessel, so that requirement went away.
As part of my lobbying effort, I successfully passed a test for receiving code at 20 words per minute, and then subsequently refused to use the code on the air.
As if the FCC cared that you passed the test and then never used code on the air. I dare say, there were many many people who lobbied the same way -- without any effect, and without even knowing it. Does it count that I passed the test and used CW exactly once, forty years ago?
We won.
There are a lot of people who lost, or at least have a good argument that they did. If nothing else, CW was a good way of holding back the push for government agencies and NGO to get access to amateur frequencies.
With the loss of CW and the changes to the rules, all it takes for a government agency to get essentially free access to the ham bands is having their employees pass a 34 question test. At that point, paid employees can use the ham bands for exercises and drills: [ecfr.gov]
NGO are limited to one hour per week but for two weeks they can be 3 days long. There is no time limit on government-sponsored "drills".
I know that government agencies are doing exactly this, because I've VEd exam sessions where they had employees getting their licenses.
Re:Morse Code (Score:4, Interesting)
The Novice license stopped being the path to entry once the no-code Technician licensing started. There was indeed an ITU requirement, but it was at the behest of IARU, not as the requirement of any government. Similarly, FCC actually raised code speed requirements at the behest of ARRL. Shore stations had moved to phone and teletype decades before. Most ships no longer employed radio operators, but left that duty to other staff who only used phone. There was only a token continuing monitoring of Morse ship transmissions, now entirely gone.
There was one pro-code guy who pleaded with me to allow Amateur Radio to "die with dignity". If nothing else did, that convinced me that the pro-code folks could see the end coming and would accept it as long as it came after they died. Amateur licensing was declining fast, operators were dying faster than new ones got licenses, and we could see the end of Amateur Radio would come in a few decades at most..
Now there are more hams than ever, and Amateur Radio is healthy. When I say "We won", it means "Amateur Radio won". It's too bad we had to fight our own old guys.
There isn't really any reason for government agencies and NGOs to use Amateur Radio. They have satellite phones, etc. But if it really bothers you, why not lobby against allowing compensation for operators? I'd join that bandwagon.
So I see (Score:3, Informative)
I Google'd "bruce perens site:fcc.gov" and this [fcc.gov] came up as the first hit.
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Yes, I know about the NAVAIDs, but they identify at 5 WPM and the airman's charts print the dots and dashes next to the waypoint. And there might still be runway aids that say a few letters, also at 5 WPM, but it's always the same letters for left and right and the outer, middle, and inner marker. Pilots learn the sounds for each.
When I was a Technician licensee, all of the repeaters were populated mostly by Technician licensees, and identified much faster than any of them could copy. So it was clear the Mo
I sent mail... (Score:2)
In my world (Score:2)
Given this is slashdot, you're probably thinking "fuck Heineken man - we're talking' computer shit around here dude!"
So my oldest piece of digital gear is a box of floppy disks from the mid 1980
Pixar (Score:5, Interesting)
The Pixar code base came from Lucasfilm, and went back to the 1970's. Some of that code is still in use.
Commodore (Score:2)
An interesting field trip (Score:4, Interesting)
Used that PDP-8 for the next 2 years, it was the only computer they had.
External USR Serial Modem (Score:3)
I recently replaced a client's flaky USB modem for a dedicated fax PC (used daily, all day) with an external US Robotics 56K Serial modem made in 1996 I had gotten from another client. Made in the good ole' U.S. of A. by beer drinking, beard-having men. Its red lights flicker like I remember in the old BBS days - I suspect it will hum along for years to come.
Commodore 64... (Score:2)
title because I need a title (Score:2)
One of my customers still has a Netware 3.12 machine. I'm the third person to be responsible for it. The last two guys are both retired now. I got the gig based on being the youngest person the company could find who actually knows Netware. It runs their ordering/job cost/inventory systems and whatever files or reports it makes can actually be used by their relatively modern accounting software.
Another guy I do work for has a System/38 machine in his office. I have no earthly idea what he does with it since
TCP/IP (Score:4, Insightful)
Fairly much everyone uses TCP/IP, that dates from the 70's.
Eternal backward compatibility (Score:2)
Legacy System Theseus (Score:5, Funny)
TRS 80-100 (Score:3)
Slide rule (Score:2)
Harddrive for a 386 (Score:2)
My desktop tech brought me a 386 that had a failed hard drive due to a building collapse (a longer story). It was part of a 3 computer "network" that housed a database of "drug buy" money for the local police department. We replaced the harddrive and put DOS and the database back on it (via floppy backup no less). To the best of my knowledge, it is still in service today. That is how you keep the hackers out!
SD
motif (Score:2)
RS-232 Serial (Score:2)
RS-232 serial consoles to network gear. Running at 9600 baud.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm working with brand new prototype boards and all of the embedded boards I work on have RS232. The reason for this is that it's dirt simple to implement and only needs 3 wires. I only need a few lines of assembly code to initialize it and send or receive a character. It also doesn't care about things like DHCP servers and whatnot, only that you get the pinout and baudrate right. On multiple occasions it was the only way to transfer new images to a board to fix the flash. Of course on some of these boards
Studio gear... (Score:2)
I had a circa-1986 Mac 512K running in my recording studio up until the early 2000s. It ran Opcode MidiMac (sequencing) and SoundDesigner II (sampling, front-end for an Ensoniq Mirage). Never crashed, reliable as hell, and very quiet since there was no fan or hard drive. Load the OS and software from a 400K floppy and it would run until the heat death of the universe.
Most everyone involved in music production (EDM excepted) has an affinity for vintage equipment, whether it's an old RCA ribbon mic, an EMT
Gopher, as of last year (Score:3)
Last year that old guy finally retired. That afternoon we took Copher off the friggin' network.
It didn't mean much as we did so automated end runs around it but he insisted that it stay there because of some manifesto a neckbeard wrote 20 years ago that was the darkest day of the Internet when Gopher was subsumed. He was somehow still shocked that the community of network administrators failed to rally to save it.
OS/2 and DOS. (Score:2)
The clients have an OS/2 box installed in each of their service (gas) stations. Everything runs on them, time sheets, inventory, ordering, POS, training systems, email, security monitoring etc. In their case it's been a very profitable investment.
Another client has a DOS box they use to control a large self-adhesive vinyl printer and a CAD cutter (self-adhesive vinyl cutter for signage). They made their money back many times over on the software and hardware investment - the hardware was particularly expens
COBOL Program written in 1968 (Score:5, Interesting)
DEC UNIX Servers (Score:2)
In 2006 I was working as a system administrator and we were just retiring the production DEC UNIX servers. Yes, actual Digital servers from before it was HP and before it was Compaq. We hated the yearly data center shutdown because we never knew if those servers would come back up. Another group had migrated the applications over to Linux blades.
two candidates... (Score:2)
1950's code (but also a pencil, paper and wheels) (Score:2)
Some code written in RPG on an AS/400 that was hosting a MAAPICS environment. Some of the code updates were dated to the early 1960's, and there were indications that some of the original code dated back to the 1950's.
But yes, technically the oldest technology I have used is either a pencil and paper or the wheels on an old cart - those specific instances of the wheels were not that old, but as instances of the "wheel" object within the OO design schema, the wheel object itself is pretty old.
6-bit code (Score:2)
I was part of a group in 2002 that was getting an application migrated over to run as a web application instead of a batch process at night. I forget what system it was originally written on but it was 6-bit and no money was ever spent to convert the data into 8-bit. So there was a bunch (50+) small programs from the mainframe days that would read in the 6-bit data, convert it to 8-bit, do it's little bit of work, convert it back to 6-bit, and write it out for the next program.
One of the things we recomme
40 year old spectrometer (Score:5, Interesting)
Lever (Score:2)
how about an emulated Wang 2200 on SCO Unix ? (Score:4, Informative)
I almost want to post anon but I can't resist. When I took over my current job ten years ago, the company used a green-screen accounting system based on an emulated Wang 2200 running on SCO Open Server. That puts the actual technology in use back around 1973. This used the Niakwa [niakwa.com] Basic2c system. The system was lovingly maintained (!) by some dedicated guys in Auburndale.
Before we migrated it off it we got it running on Linux and I still have a KVM image running this system over Centos 5. The last time I booted it was in 2014, or 41 years after the Wang 2200 came out. I actually used one at Ashland (MA) High School - the second interactive computer I ever used. (The first was a PDP-8 accessed via a teletype at 110 baud from Wayland Junior High School).
Old tech (Score:5, Funny)
I live in a country thats so old-fashioned they measure things in feet and inches...
Re: (Score:2)
Until those retards at Apple decided to remove the perfectly good working FTP implementation from the Finder.
Finder? [apple.com] D00d, that's a user-mode NFS server with an FTP client you've got there; the Finder just thinks it's a remote mount. (The UI stuff comes from a combination of the FTPFS plugin for the NetFS framework and NetAuthAgent/NetAuthSysAgent.)
And in what fashion was it "removed"? If I go to ftp://ftp.sonic.net/pub [sonic.net] in Safari on Yosemite, it still does the mount.
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Nothing is older than water.
What about hydrogen and oxygen?
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Yes, Clariion boxes were running WIndows, even after EMC bought them. I remember setting up an AX unit that was running Windows XP. It filled me with confidence in the data we were storing on that appliance.
Well at least it did not mangle files like Windows Home Server.