23 Apr
2012
23 Apr
'12
9:50 p.m.
On 23 Apr 2012, at 8:29 PM, David Riley wrote:
I think it's a very literal implementation of the
"If it ain't
broke, don't fix it" mentality. For all the money and power it
may be wasting running our weapons on ancient machines, just
think of all the money and manpower they waste when they try to
*update* these systems (look at the sad state of the attempts to
update our air traffic control system if you want an example).
The ATC upgrade is a very good example; the earlier attempts were fairly successful thanks
to emulation of the old hardware (first 3083 BX1 machines replaced in turn by 9672 RA4
machines both of which ran the original 9020/System 360 assembly code in emulation mode);
it wasn't until they actually started trying to deploy something entirely new that it
turned into a huge money pit. That lesson is a large part of why the GSE remanufacturing
sector prefers to replace obsolete computing platforms with emulators and hardware support
for systems-specific interface cards; they can use the same software and, if the gods
smile upon them, the same interface hardware while dispensing with the unsupported
computer in the middle of it all.
--
Dr. Christian Kennedy
chris at mainecoon.com AF6AP
http://www.mainecoon.com PGP KeyID 108DAB97
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"Mr. McKittrick, after careful consideration..."