[drblah]

Sure! Almost anything would have been a better solution. However, no one knew how the system actually worked, and we were on a shoestring budget.

See, the situation was that IT management, who officially had the responsibility for the PC saw it as a risk because we in IT were unable to do anything if the system died. But the production line management, who had to pay for the upgrade, saw no reason to do it because it was "working fine!".

Sure it was working fine, and had been for almost 20 years. But WHEN it would inevitably give up the ghost they would be completely hosed.