Industries still using ancient computers.

[William Payne]

Another neat article about this kind of thing. 

 

http://fortune.com/2015/06/24/navy-microsoft-windows-xp/

[AshleyAshes]

I think it's an interesting topic.  Most of the users on this forum will think of modern consumer tech, the latest phones or PCs and such.  Since new applications are always coming out there's always a need for new hardware for those applications.  But a lot of hardware that we easily forget, that runs all kinds of systems in industry, never has it's application change, it'll do the same thing for decades even, and so long as it can be maintained, there's no motivation to upgrade it.

 

Hrm, I wonder what the oldest servers on the internet, I mean the oldest server hardware that still runs since it was installed (Not counting replacement parts) and no something retro setup in contemporary times for 'nostalgia' purposes.

[William Payne]

Here where I live in Wanganui, New Zealand there used to be back in the 70's a Sperry Mainframe computer that took up the basement of a local building. It was jokingly called the "Wanganui Computer". 

 

What it actually was was the National law enforcement system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Law_Enforcement_System

 

That computer had information on everyone in the country, it was highly controversial. A guy even blew himself up in the reception doorway of the building. 

 

It was there for a while. I would have loved to have seen it. 

[NLTech]

Well, some industries don't need great PCs to run their tasks, but I still agree they should push to modernize. 

I have worked with local business before on getting modernized systems and networks and have shown them how to use them. One great example is Opera. My mother's hotel that I was a part time IT agent for (kinda) had to still use Windows XP and Windows 7/8 to book rooms and do their stuff. They had tried to use Windows 10 but it didn't work with Opera, and no I am not talking about the browser, I am talking of their hotel hospitality software. 
Pushing to modernize is definitely something that can make a few jobs and better the economy in a slight manner. Though as better software comes out for businesses, inevitably over time the hardware will change. 

[Hiitchy]

At a hospital I work at, they're slowly pushing out windows 10 because all the software applications they use are only functional on windows 7... They refuse to work on Windows 10.

[Ithanul]

On 9/30/2017 at 10:11 AM, William Payne said:

I just recently saw a photograph of a relatively recent fighter jet engine being worked on. What was amazing though was the computer was a mid 90's era machine running Windows 95. 

 

Also I remember when Windows was doing that forced Windows 10 update a while back, the US military had to pay Windows some horrendous amount of money to continue supporting Windows XP as they needed XP to run their software.

 

O, I just saw a computer that tops that Windows 95.  No joke, it was the most wacky old arse computer I saw.  It had over four parts and if you had to use all the parts.  You had to hook a power generator to it.  It ran one of the most wacky OS setups:  Embedded XP with MS-DOS 6.6 and MS-DOS 5. Don't ask me why the three OSes.  I will say this, it was a pain to get data off because the darn thing still used floppy drives, but of course our other computers don't have that drive.