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Re: "When is retro computing?"
Is the keyboard vintage tech? The mouse is pushing 60...
Apr 05 · 3 months ago
🌲 Half_Elf_Monk · Apr 10 at 15:08:
Worth considering: It's possible that military and mission-critical corporate tech still runs on fairly old tech. I recall that someone had to learn FORTRAN and use a floppy disc annually, in order to update something. They ran into issues ordering new floppies, but otherwise left the system unchanged... because the tech was so stable it didn't need any updates.
Friend who worked for a major health supplier in the USA sent pictures of “the room”. The company, when it went online in early 1980s, took orders via a phone resting on an acoustic modem. In 2014, with millions of dollars of Java powering their business, every inbound medical order ultimately went through the same acoustic modem. They literally built a room around it to protect the phone. The cost of the downtime to change to a modern Internet system was too high given their order volume wasn’t exceeding the modem. I don’t know if they’ve finally been forced into changing it due to gradual termination of POTS service.
@istvan, that sounds like a whole other level of incompetence. I could see it if it was compiled COBOL with no source, but Java is pretty modern. Writing a modem emulation layer is a couple of hours of work...
When is retro computing? — Ubuntu is going to be 20 years old this year and that makes me wonder how old a computer and it's operating system has to be to be considered retro? For me, Windows 2000 is retro but wind XP is not. Also any mac using PowerPC or m68k is retro to me. (The podcast Linux After Dark just did a episode on trying to run warty warthog 4.10 and compare it to the next LTS, 24.04)