21 Apr
2012
21 Apr
'12
4:56 p.m.
On 4/21/12 3:51 PM, "allison" <ajp166 at verizon.net> wrote:
On 04/21/2012 08:59 AM, Liam Proven wrote:
Funny coincidence: I was just chatting with someone from the University
Hospital Nuclear Medicine Unit (at University of Washington) about their
PDP-11/23. It's still an integral part of the cyclotron installation they
use to generate nuclear materials for medical use as well as neutron beams
for cancer therapy. When I first saw the machine a couple of years ago,
they were talking about decommissioning it, not because it isn't still
rock solid but because the custom interface hardware is getting harder to
maintain! They're still using it while they validate a replacement
solution. -- Ian
Shocking headline: "23 year old computer
still in daily use at a
silver mine. MicroVAX 3100 running openVMS on 12mb memory."
Pictures:
http://www.reddit.com/tb/sl3ll
Comments:
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/sl3ll/23_year_old_computer_st
ill_in_daily_use_at_a/
Very common. They have no idea how many of the 50,000++ Bridgeport
3axis mill systems
are still running LSI11/2 (KD11) and another 25K of the KDF11 (11/23)
out there. I Would guess
there are still many of the PDP8 and 8a based units still going. I
don't think the San Francisco
Cable car system has retired all the pdp8s yet.
I have 10 uVAX 3100s of them and they all still run.
This is a classic self contained system where changing the host system
and redeveloping the
software and interfaces is more costly than buying a dozen spares.
FYI: the people I'd gotten my uVAX systems from hadn't even gotten them
out the door to me
and were regretting the PC based boxes for their propensity to fail..
often for hardware and
software.
"We" often forget how little horsepower is needed to simply fetch the
mail!
Allison