20 Jun
2013
20 Jun
'13
11:33 a.m.
On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 7:36 AM, Mr Ian Primus <ian_primus at yahoo.com> wrote:
--- On Wed, 6/19/13, Josh Dersch <derschjo at
gmail.com> wrote:
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).
- Josh
The article (and the job posting) only mentions
the software
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.
-Ian