20 Jun
2013
20 Jun
'13
1:52 p.m.
On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 12:56 PM, Tothwolf <tothwolf at concentric.net> wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jun 2013, Josh Dersch wrote:
No doubt.
On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 7:36 AM, Mr Ian Primus
<ian_primus at yahoo.com>
wrote:
Hard disks likely won't be an issue over time. I expect several hard drive
emulators will be available long before that becomes an issue for these
sorts of specialized applications. Even then, it is nearing the point where
hobbyist with the right tools and knowledge can repair/recreate parts for
some earlier drives, and I see no reason why this trend won't continue.
Electrolytic capacitors will certainly go bad, but replacements should
still be available in the future. --- On Wed, 6/19/13, Josh Dersch <derschjo at
gmail.com> wrote:
The article (and the job posting) only mentions the software
Oh, I'm not doubting that they have spares (and lots of them) but by 2050
these spares will easily be pushing 70 years old. Hard drives and power
supplies will go bad just sitting there. For the logic, I wonder about
the
effects of bit rot, etc. even on unused NOS spares. Someone'll have to be
there who knows how to keep an -11 running, I wonder who they've found :).
Of course, this is perhaps less of an issue if they're not running on
original hardware (simulation or a modern clone, for example).
side of things -- wonder what their plan is to
keep their
PDP-11 hardware running for the next 40 years.I have to
imagine that by then parts might be hard to find:).
I would be willing to wager that they already have the parts, and have
had
them for some time. Big, important, mission critical applications, you
have
a complete hot spare system that's kept current with the production one,
and you have spare parts for both. And you likely bought them new, all at
the same time.
I would not be surprised at all if they've got enough parts to keep those
machines running for a hundred years, all tested, labeled, inventoried,
and
ready to go. I know I would.
I have NOS TTL parts here that are over 30 years old
that still work just
fine. EPROMs might very well need to be reprogrammed (or replaced if the
quartz windows aren't properly sealed to the IC body), but masked ROMs
should be good just about indefinitely.
That's all well and good -- but do you want to stake a nuclear power
plant's operations on that assumption? :) (And I already have a couple of
machines with failing masked ROMs, unfortunately. Though they are in the
vast minority, I agree).
I guess my question is -- does anyone really know what'll happen to (for
example) already aged TTL parts in the next 30 years?
At any rate, all of this maintenance still requires a hardware engineer who
knows how PDP-11s work, I wonder if they had a job listing for that as well?
- Josh