21 Apr
2012
21 Apr
'12
3:51 p.m.
On 04/21/2012 08:59 AM, Liam Proven wrote:
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_stil…
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