24 Apr
1998
24 Apr
'98
11:35 a.m.
On Fri, 24 Apr 1998, William Donzelli wrote:
Of course the issue is not hardware, but rather software. And the
continued maintainence of that software beyond 2000. And I'm sure a lot
of companies will decide, irregardless of the platform, that its just not
worth maintaining that decrepit code anymore and it would be a better
investment to take the hit and upgrade to some modern platform with new
software.
I guess we'll have to wait and see, but I stand by my assertion, and my
garage is ready and waiting.
Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't blame me...I voted for Satan.
Coming in September...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0
See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!
[Last web page update: 04/23/98]
Think of all
the companies who are right now weighing whether or not those
old mainframes that have been chugging away in their data centers for
years, perhaps even decades, are worth one more upgrade to support 4-digit
years or whether it would make more sense to finally take the painful
route of scrapping their old iron and moving on to PCs or AS400s or
whatnot. I predict a tremendous flood of old mainframe and mini hardware
coming to market like so many cattle which will only peak on December 31,
1999.
I do not think we are going to see a huge influx of oldiron at the
scrapyards come the turn of the century. It has been happening steadily
for the past five years or so. The mainframe world tends to be
similar to the consumer desktop word, with the old S/360 standard being
the dominant force and the Unisys standards being a distant second (like
the Macintosh). Both of these companies foresaw the Y2K problem and came
out with new machines and operating systems, and they have been selling
lot of them (well, IBM and company anyway - Unisys seems to be fading).
The hardware Y2K problem, for the most part, has been solved. But that was
the easy bit...