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DoD still uses 8-inch floppies. :D

Department of Defense, Strategic Automated Command and Control System:
Coordinates the operational functions of the United States’ nuclear forces, such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear bombers, and tanker support aircrafts. This system runs on an IBM Series/1 Computer—a 1970s computing system—and uses 8-inch floppy disks.
Click to expand...

Egads!

Mike
 
I did some disk duplication for some military outfit that was still using Microvaxen. They didn't seem to worried about it.

If you look at some of the airframes in service, some of that requires fairly antique maintenance gear.

And then there's the matter of the computer equipment used for nuclear power plant control...
 
I am not that worried about the hardware (they seemed to use decent hardware of the time), its porting the software after everyone that knew anything about it is dead or long retired. Machine language on an old IBM mainframe from the 60's isn't exactly still being studied in school. You can port COBOL to something newer or a virtual machine but custom machine language... ick. Its not like porting an Amiga chip to FPGA and getting Golden Axe to run 99.2% of the time.

You could probably plop a few dozen PLCs into a nuclear reactor control room and be good to go, the devices that give you the signals are the hard part.

I'm sure the contractors making a killing keeping it running are not worried about it, at the end of the day if it fails they can walk away with all their cash.

I was under the impression todays IT was all about re inventing the same wheel using proprietary systems and software every 10 years or IT department change whichever comes first. Basically the other extreme of never upgrading everything is upgrading too often for no real purpose of then vender kickbacks.
 
From a security standpoint, it is much more difficult to walk out of the building with an 8" disk stuffed in your pocket. :p

Similarly, I would expect every inch of the machines they are using have been audited and verified as secure and functional to spec. Good luck doing that with any over-engineered "modern" electronics. Who knows how many back doors the Chinese really have in there?

Also if they did their jobs right, they would have obtained sufficient spares, supplies, parts, and other support at day one to to last the specified long term lifetime of the device.
 
Modern computers may have faster processors, and the ability to address more memory. But they are more delicate, and don't have the service life of the older gear.

I don't know of any storage devices more reliable reliable than a 1981-1984 Shugart SA-850 DSDD 8" floppy drive. I recent sold a replacement drive belt to a company to replace the belt on a SA-850 on a CNC machine that has been running 24/7 for decades without being shut off. The belt recently finally fell apart. Company neglected to shut off the ac power to the drive when they closed down each day, so the drive just sat there spinning for years (it was used every workday). I'm trying to convince the company that the drive deserves a cleaning and alignment.

An S-100 mainframe utilizing a CVT transformer is not subject the system crashes the same way that a PC will everytime there's a powerline hiccup. S-100 systems are also better able to resist damage from a EM discharge. I'm sure that the Air Force would love to replace a lot of the S-100 systems that they are still using, but they haven;t found anything that can do the job as well for a reasonable cost. What's reasonable? Look at what the Government is spending a year on unsuccessful programs to replace other systems they down't work. The IRS is a great example of IT failure.

My Compupro has some boards in it that are 35 years old now. For years it used to run 16-20 hours a day, seven days a week, and it has only need minor maintenance or repair 2-3 times since 1980. The most recent down time was last week when I was trying to go through 110 8" floppy disks that came a big lot or stuff I bought from an estate sale. The disks were in worse condition that I realized, and the heads stopped working when they were covered by loose magnetic oxide shed by the old floppies. This isn't really the computer fault, it's a cleaning problem. The last time before this was over ten years ago, when I had to reseat the chips on a couple of S-100 boards.

I the same period of time, I've probably had a couple of dozen PCs. Seems like something breaks (often the power supplies), or the hard drive hiccups and needs to be reformatted (or replaced) every 3-6 months. And don;t get me started on the number of times I've been forced to change computers because Microsoft blackmailed all the hardware and software companies into cutting off support for all hardware and software that were designed for use with earlier versions of Windows.
 
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Interesting... It says that they hope to replace the Series/1 by 2017. If they are successful, what will happen to the machine?

Scrap? Or preserved as being one of the last IBM Series/1's in service?

Really neat that these old things are still doing their job.
 
Scrap, probably--given the way they'll remove it from the site.

I know that USAF did much of their logistics work well into the 80s, using programs written in a mix of early COBOL and Autocoder for the IBM 7080 using emulation on S/370 boxes. Another case to study would be the years it took California to convert their S/360-based DMV code to something more modern--many millions wasted trying to bring the system up to date.

Big applications require a different mindset. Consider Oregon's experience with Oracle setting up a health care exchange under the ACA. $200M down the tubes for a non-functioning system. The fact that it was modern made absolutely no difference--and it's still in the courts and under FBI investigation. You'd figure that Larry Ellison's behemoth would know how to do such an application for little Oregon--but apparently, it didn't.
 
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I think it'd be neat to start a company that sells emulated vintage hardware to government and business. A fancy, emulator, though, that can interact with real hardware and other actual vintage machines. Actually reverse engineer peripherals and emulate those, too. It'd be expensive and hard to do, but then you can charge a lot for what seems like a very much needed service. Maybe hire on contract some of the veterans before they're all gone. :(

I kind of envisioned a virtual motherboard, say, for an IBM PS/1, complete with card slots, memory slots, disk interface, etc. You can then "install" virtual cards, virtual memory sticks, and connect virtual disks in whatever configuration you like. Then you can load some of that super specific software that business and government often run, the stuff they haven't upgraded because it'd be too expensive to port relative to "just dealing with it." The same could be done for all types of different computers. Then, of course, release the software for free for educational use.

Hah. I can see a big warehouse filled with vintage hardware from all walks of life, all to be reverse engineered and emulated. :)

I seem to recall that the Air Force (I think it was the Air Force) still had a bunch of really old computers in a pre-ethernet networking configuration. They've contracted several companies to update and modernize their system, but after millions of dollars wasted on a bunch of different companies claiming they can do it, they all eventually say they can't do it because it's too archaic.

So my approach would be to not bother converting anything, just emulate it on modern, really fast machines, then continue using the system. If it can't be converted, then make it faster.


Fun to imagine stuff like that. Oh well. :)
 
Imagine the power being wasted by all these old systems. And for that matter, it always amazes me to see 10 year old servers in very expensive data centres plodding on, seems many places never heard of virtualisation.
 
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