this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
948 points (96.5% liked)

Lemmy Shitpost

26670 readers
3141 users here now

Welcome to Lemmy Shitpost. Here you can shitpost to your hearts content.

Anything and everything goes. Memes, Jokes, Vents and Banter. Though we still have to comply with lemmy.world instance rules. So behave!


Rules:

1. Be Respectful


Refrain from using harmful language pertaining to a protected characteristic: e.g. race, gender, sexuality, disability or religion.

Refrain from being argumentative when responding or commenting to posts/replies. Personal attacks are not welcome here.

...


2. No Illegal Content


Content that violates the law. Any post/comment found to be in breach of common law will be removed and given to the authorities if required.

That means:

-No promoting violence/threats against any individuals

-No CSA content or Revenge Porn

-No sharing private/personal information (Doxxing)

...


3. No Spam


Posting the same post, no matter the intent is against the rules.

-If you have posted content, please refrain from re-posting said content within this community.

-Do not spam posts with intent to harass, annoy, bully, advertise, scam or harm this community.

-No posting Scams/Advertisements/Phishing Links/IP Grabbers

-No Bots, Bots will be banned from the community.

...


4. No Porn/ExplicitContent


-Do not post explicit content. Lemmy.World is not the instance for NSFW content.

-Do not post Gore or Shock Content.

...


5. No Enciting Harassment,Brigading, Doxxing or Witch Hunts


-Do not Brigade other Communities

-No calls to action against other communities/users within Lemmy or outside of Lemmy.

-No Witch Hunts against users/communities.

-No content that harasses members within or outside of the community.

...


6. NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.


-Content that is NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.

-Content that might be distressing should be kept behind NSFW tags.

...

If you see content that is a breach of the rules, please flag and report the comment and a moderator will take action where they can.


Also check out:

Partnered Communities:

1.Memes

2.Lemmy Review

3.Mildly Infuriating

4.Lemmy Be Wholesome

5.No Stupid Questions

6.You Should Know

7.Comedy Heaven

8.Credible Defense

9.Ten Forward

10.LinuxMemes (Linux themed memes)


Reach out to

All communities included on the sidebar are to be made in compliance with the instance rules. Striker

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Knightfox@lemmy.one 61 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

What do you mean, this bad boy is probably powering a semi-critical government system somewhere, definitely not obsolete.

Edit: not even joking or shitting on it, there's probably a proprietary software system out there somewhere that a contractor was paid to build ages ago. The contractor is out of business or doesn't support it anymore, but it works perfectly in its one little spot. Also an update is gonna cost a quarter of a million dollars.

I've seen disk chart meters at facilities that are 40+ years old and need a new disk chart every so often. You could replace it with a digital meter, but that won't integrate with the rest of the control panel and a third party took over production of the disks 15 years ago. The system works great and it's unlikely to be updated unless they stop making the disk charts.

Edit 2: the correct term is circular chart recorder

[–] SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There are some data recording systems on planes designed in the 90s that still use the original designs. Memory cards that are as big as your hand and only hold megabytes worth of data.

Upgrading would be fairly simple in theory, but getting anything approved to be used on an aircraft is an expensive pain in the ass so they don't want to go through that. They don't need any more storage capacity either.

So somewhere out there some companies are making these now ancient parts for now ancient systems, and probably making a killing because nobody else makes them.

[–] HowManyNimons@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I know for a fact that many hospitals are still running 1970s COBOL on beige servers in the corners of basements that have been taken over by ICU wards. Because I has to maintain that shit amongst the dying. Weird job.

[–] NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

See also: Pennsylvania State Emissions Testing System

[–] Cihta@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I made so much money on this kinda stuff. And even after all updated they still kept those damn chart recorders. Luckily they were standalone and I guess easier than hitting print.

And most of you would be terrified if you knew what they were manufacturing. Ignorance is bliss, trust.

[–] Zhao@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I had almost this exact scenario happen with a CNC machine for a very old but profitable niche company. Pain in my ass.

[–] WashedOver@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Seems like this issue is across a few different industries. I had two CnC machine running software on old PC's with special cards to interface with the drives. One was running in a Dos box while the other was running windows XP. We could never afford any down time so it was fine some old PC's that can still run this stuff.

[–] Cihta@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I don't know if it's still there but I once did some work getting a plasma cutter back to operational. OS/2. Not even warp!

Oh it's a pretty solid OS but i mean, damn.

Parallel port hardware key and everything. I do believe in keeping what works working but at some point you gotta let go because you run out of people that can solve problems with it.

[–] SkidFace@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

This is super true. I occasionally visit a TRIGA reactor that was built decades ago, and a good chunk of the computers critical in infrastructure run comically old versions of windows since software used to operate the faculty was a custom job.