I was an IT tech in college, and one of our biology professors had a stack of ancient computers in a closet specifically because the electron microscope in his lab had to have a computer as a controller connected to it that ran Windows 3.1 and which had extremely specific hardware specs. He’d Frankenstein them together as parts quit, and was always on the lookout for this very specific computer on eBay. I had to get his microscope back running once by installing Windows and the controller software on the “new” computer, and it was actually really enjoyable. Brought back a ton of memories. But yeah, he is just buying time until his perfectly good microscope quits working all because he ran out of parts.
I had a similar experience but in a big aerospace company (~1500 persons on the site where I was working).
The system to create and edit work instructions was only running on old UNIX workstations. It was in 2015.
Out of curiosity which computer was this?
Compaq or Dell. Similar situation with microscopes. They required FireWire to work.
A really old Compaq, don’t remember the specific model
We have a very expensive engraver at our shop, probably to the tune of idk, $20-30 thousand. It’s a pretty large, heavy machine. We use it all day long for identification tags on cabinet doors, push button tags, serial ID tags. Absolutely critical to our business and the company that made it went out of business so if the windows 7 laptop that has the software ever dies, it becomes useless.
You can sell it to a Makerspace or just toss on a new main board. Engravers, lasers, CNC machines, mills, etc all operate on the same fundamental principles.
LinuxCNC or Marlin work with practically every piece of hardware that you can imagine. Stepper motors/drivers have 4 wires each. Once you figure out which is which, just plug them into a Beagleboard or something similar, load up the software, and you’re good to go. Often with far more capabilities and accuracy.
Plus you keep more tech waste out of landfills.
Well, that’s… not smart. Maintaining Win95 on actual hardware and implying they’d lose the data if those ancient pieces of crap went down? Big yikes. One thing is “how did you not virtualize this 10+ years ago”, but man, backups??
You can’t virtualize it because you need to physically plug in the hardware, and backups are useless if you can’t read the files without the Win95 software.
Honestly maintaining or figuring out a migration method for these dinosaur systems would be my ideal job. I just love tinkering with these relics of the past but have no idea where to find this kind of work
There are companies that still sell new machines of archaic operating systems for this reason. I’d really recommend anyone in the situation of justletmeremember to look into it, all that stuff could be backed up and given redundancies pretty inexpensively considering the risk.
And yeah, it’s really common. There is way more horrifying applications than research that rely on legacy machines. Everyone has heard that nuclear weapons required floppy disks until very recently, but it wasn’t some isolated case. Stuff like that is all over the military despite the insane amount of money it steals.
I’m okay with this.
/s
I just got a 5 figure check for two weeks of work reverse engineering proprietary protocols for a super high end centrifuge.
Geeze, scientists! How hard is it to rip apart the hardware, hook up a JTAG debugger, attach an oscilloscope to various PCB traces, capture the data (praying to Linus that it’s a switched protocol), find what might be some documentation from a sketchy Slavic website, call an ex who speaks Russian and have them translate, then reimplement the drivers in a modern operating system with modern realtime kernel modules.
It ain’t
bathysphererocket surgery!Cries in I just wanna play Landscape but “online only” that the pulled the plug on after like 3 months. Thanks Daybreak.
I agree with the goal of this, but don’t necessarily agree with its specific assertions.
Like yes, 100% we would be way better off if companies would actively support emulation by selling super-cheap any games that they otherwise have no interest in anymore.
But actually, yes, I do enjoy paying $40 for the remake of an old classic, if it’s done well.
The Spyro remaster from a few years ago was extremely well-done and I loved being able to play a favourite from my childhood on my computer. It was exactly the same game, only with modernised graphics. Well worth it.
Even better, Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition. It upgraded the graphics, but also added an enormous amount of new content and (most importantly) quality of life features, all done in consultation with the community that had been playing the original game for 20 years at the time DE came out. It would be best if you could still buy the original 1999 version for five bucks, but frankly I doubt many people would if you could, because the Definitive Edition was done so well.
It’s obviously different when there’s a remake that’s nothing but a cheap cash grab. Or when there hasn’t been any type of modern update. I wish, for example, it was easier for me to get my hands on a copy of Battle for Middle-Earth 2 to play with my friends. But the company that made it isn’t even allowed to continue selling it, for complicated licensing reasons. Because copyright law sucks.
But actually, yes, I do enjoy paying $40 for the remake of an old classic, if it’s done well.
Yeah, but quite often it’s not done well, and is still explicitly intended to replace if not displace the original.
Yeah for sure. That’s actually another reason that old abandonware should be kept available for people to play. If they come up with a replacement that’s good enough to displace the original, that’s awesome. But if they come up with a replacement that isn’t worth it, they shouldn’t be able to artificially prop up that version by making the original unavailable.
If you own it, you should be able to copy it for your enjoyment.
If it was or is critical to work, you should be able to copy it.
Licenses back when this all started were perpetual. I use it for the entirety of my life. So long as I breathe I have a license for it. Emulating that shouldn’t be illegal at all.
No disagreement from me whatsoever.
I personally hated the Definitive Edition for AoE2 :(
Huh, that’s very interesting. I’m genuinely curious to know what it was that you didn’t like about it.
Because the truth is that you’re seemingly in the extreme minority. While 2013’s HD edition seemed to split the community and received a bit of a mixed reaction, since 2019’s DE has been an unmitigated success in terms of both finances for the devs, and in terms of unifying and growing the size of the community.
I’m still unhappy about them initially locking content behind time-limited challenges. Didn’t buy the game early enough or just didn’t happen to play at the right time? No 256x tech mode for you!
It’s blatantly coercive design and even though it appears they’ve since unlocked the content for everyone I still have a negative opinion of the game because of it.
Yeah that’s not great. To be honest for the most part I really like it. Most of the stuff you unlock is pure cosmetics (profile pictures or alternate looks for units—which only display as different for you, not your opponent). They’re just some good fun, and I find my completionist nature enjoys jumping into the game to get them.
But there have been a few of the things unlocked as part of the challenges—that 256x mod is one of them, and there have also been a couple of cheat codes more recently—that did feel like more substantial things to miss out on if you happened not to be able to play while they were on offer. I wasn’t playing when the 256x mod was around, but when the cheat codes first appeared I recall thinking it was pretty disappointing for anyone who might have wanted them that would miss out for whatever reason.
I was expecting they wouldn’t change the visuals and feel of the game so much, I guess. Don’t know if it was the idea but I tried for a few hours and ended up refunding it because I was expecting the same “feel” I had from the original/hd version and everything felt so… different. Maybe I need to give it another try but I remember at the time I decide to stick with the HD Version because it was what felt more familiar for me.
Yeah fair enough. That sort of thing is definitely subjective and it would be impossible for anyone to say you’re wrong.
Personally, I find the new QOL features impossible to live without now. Shift-queueing absolutely any task, being able to queue multiple techs or techs and units, villagers keeping one resource until they actually start gathering—rather than losing all the gold they’re carrying just because you accidentally clicked a tree—farm autoreseeding. To me, none of these really change the fundamental way the game feels, they just make it feel like a smoother, more polished version of the original game.