[sbrorson]

This is a relevant article to me since I also make 20yo (or older) computers run legacy stuff ... but not for fun.

Factories and labs frequently have machines or instruments which are controlled by a computer. They are run off control cards which are inserted into ISA or PCI slots in the computer and are commanded by the legacy software through old, proprietary drivers. Examples are cards from National Instruments or Galil. Such equipment can cost tens of thousands of dollars (or more) when new. Also, decades-old software written by long-gone engineers at the factory still runs on the equipment, and nobody understands how the stuff works nowadays. Therefore, there is plenty of incentive to keep the old systems running and running and running.

Unfortunately, old computers sometimes break. That's where I come in -- I do a side consulting business with a colleague where we refurbish the old computers -- replace parts as necessary, install old versions of the O/S, replace mechanical hard drives with SSDs, and do whatever else is needed to keep the computers running for the next few decades.

I know we're not alone out there since we're aware of other small businesses which provide a similar service. It's an important thing since -- as many point out here -- modern software companies don't make backwards compatibility a priority, but factories and labs have equipment which need to run for decades, so the computers controlling them also need to run for decades.

[TMWNN]

>Also, decades-old software written by long-gone engineers at the factory still runs on the equipment, and nobody understands how the stuff works nowadays. Therefore, there is plenty of incentive to keep the old systems running and running and running.

Vernor Vinge figured this out 25 years ago. A Deepness in the Sky depicts a human society thousands of years in the future, in which pretty much all software has already been written; it's just a matter of finding it. So programmer-archaeologists search archives and run code on emulators in emulators in emulators as far back as needed. <https://garethrees.org/2013/06/12/archaeology/>

(This week I migrated a VM to its third hypervisor. It has been a VM for 15 years, and began as a physical machine more than two decades ago.)

[ozim]

I’d say most of current stuff is “get new guys, write it from scratch again”.

That is how you get new framework each year.

Maybe more people should be just software historians.

On the other hand rewriting stuff in new ways is beneficial as new processors come to life.

[TacticalCoder]

> ... but factories and labs have equipment which need to run for decades, so the computers controlling them also need to run for decades.

for PCs it's obviously not a problem (there are just so many parts out there for just about everything and anything) but what about these proprietary expensive ISA (or PCI) cards you mention? Are replacement available for decades too? Or are they easy to find second hand at reasonable prices?

[behringer]

You take them to someone who can do component level repairs.

And the basic hardware is more difficult than just the parts and these nuances can make certain parts expensive and rare.

You have to know all kinks of things like irqs, dos commands, memory layout, jumper settings, just an insane amount of stuff compared to modern plug and play equipment.

[EricE]

That insane amount of stuff was just par for the course back in the day. I still have my old spreasheets and technicians toolkit of 5.25" floppies with all the old school utilities (check it - I forgot about it until I came across my old suite of floppies while moving a few years back)

[1970-01-01]

I'm curious if you do this alone or with another full time job. I've been searching for a gig company that allows one to turn old PC knowledge into a side gig.

[sbrorson]

It's a side gig for me. The biggest hurdle is finding a bunch of companies fielding the old equipment and then becoming known to them. In that sense it's like any other consulting gig -- it's mostly about who you know, not what you know.

[graemep]

Will it help that this increasingly affects less specialist stuff (household appliances, cars...) that the general public use? It makes it more of a known issue.

With more things being network connected, how will we deal with the problem of keeping things not just working but secure? Is it generally practical to air gap equipment in factories and labs?

[bombcar]

Older equipment is often air gapped just because it really had no reason to be networked, and even if you DO want it networked, it's relatively easy to air gap.

It's the new stuff that is all "cloud based" that will have real problems in 10 years.

[sbrorson]

Yes, this will be a major problem for factories. Any "cloud based" software is guaranteed to become obsolete and incompatible well within the lifetime of the equipment it controls. If you're dealing with real manufacturing or lab equipment you should avoid "cloud based" stuff like the plague.

Most of the equipment I deal with is not on the net. It doesn't need to be since it's just controlling some machine which is busy making something real. If you need to move any data on or off the computer you use USB sticks (or sometimes CDs or floppies).

Some newer test stands are interfaced to an internal LAN so they can provide process control data to a database. In that case one either needs to provide some sort of firewall between the equipment's computer and the database, or just bite the bullet and redesign the whole thing for compatibility with, say, Win 10 (at major expense in time and money).

I wish I could convince people to target their automation stuff to Linux so the backwards compatibility problem would be easier, but corporations still balk at that.