Old men have a place here: forgotten IT technologies in the ranks

In September 2016, an amazing news story took place: in a small Polish car repair shop, a Commodore 64 computer was found, which is used by the owner to balance the driveshafts. Commodore 64, Carl! Moreover, the computer survived even after the workshop once flooded with flooding. This story gave us the idea to look for other examples of modern use of old, forgotten IT-technologies.

When it comes to old computers, we are nostalgic for the old CD and ZX-Spectrum , and with affection we recall the ancient mainframes that worked on punched cards. Some believe that such dinosaurs can no longer be used in modern business processes or weapon systems. It turns out they can!
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While the mass consumer considers two-year-old smartphones hopelessly outdated, a considerable part of the transport and military infrastructure around the world, some companies and even individual programmers are actively using technologies that have not been updated for decades. And if it seems to you that ATMs running on Windows XP are an anachronism, then get ready to be surprised.

If it works, do not need to upgrade

According to a report published in the spring of 2016 by the United States Audit Chamber, the IBM Series / 1 computers developed in the 1970s are still used in the control system for intercontinental ballistic missiles, strategic bombers and fuel-handling aircraft. They use 8-inch floppy disks as storage media. These devices are completely outdated in the 1980s. And despite the high cost of technical maintenance of computers, the US Department of Defense stated that it sees no reason for their urgent replacement.

The airport is not a place for new products.

Most likely, you are reading this text on a computer running one of the versions of Linux, Mac OS or Windows 7-10. And many used, say, Windows 95? Not to mention older operating systems?

In 2015, it turned out that the DECOR system used at Orly airport in Paris, which was used to transmit information to the pilots on the runway visibility necessary for taking off and landing airliners, is running Windows 3.1. And because of the failure of the vintage OSE, the DECOR did not work for a while .

Commenting on this incident, the head of the French avid-dispatchers union reported that some computers used in various systems that operate airports operate on UNIX.

What could be more conservative taxes?

When asked why victims of identity theft get new taxpayer codes with a delay, the plenipotentiary representative of the US Internal Revenue Service in February 2015 reported that a number of software systems of this state organization were written in COBOL during the time of John F. Kennedy . And since the IOS must maintain the continuity of accounting, these ancient products are not replaced, but only supported and patched, turning into hulking monsters over the decades. And to the logical question “Why does the Service still use such systems if it allocates $ 2 billion a year to information technology?”, The senator replied that the money was spent on upgrading systems developed for the Service in the 1950s and 60s.

The train is not late, it is delayed

In the New York subway trains often do not maintain the schedule. The reason is that, as of 2015, the systems developed in the 1930s (!) Are used to control the movement of trains: dispatchers track the movement of trains using large light lines, recording data on paper and manually controlling arrows and semaphores. All this machinery is very difficult to maintain in working condition, and when something breaks, the repair often turns into a difficult task.

Veterans - Veteran Software

The American network of hospitals for veterans uses the VistA software system - the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture . The caveat is that it is based on MS-DOS and is controlled only through the command line. For example, to assign a leave to a hospital employee, you must enter the command “71”, which displays a list of employees. And if you don’t know which team you need, you’ll have to learn a 500-page manual . There are no other options. Even such a simple task as setting up a meeting for a patient with a doctor requires more than ten operations to be performed by several different users : first, the doctor sends a request for an appointment, then the consultation service must report that she received an instruction and either schedule the meeting or cancel application. Not to mention the other features of this relict software product: for example, patients are tracked according to the first letter and the last four digits of the social insurance number, which leads to numerous errors and confusion.

To the stars

All of these were examples, demonstrating mostly unwillingness to rake outdated, complex systems. This requires not only high financial costs, labor and the search for specialists with, to put it mildly, not the most popular knowledge and skills. Therefore, finally, I would like to complete the review with an example of how old IT technologies are still used not because of being lazy and expensive, but because there is simply no other way.



In 1977, the Voyager-1 and Voyager-2 research spacecraft were launched. This year marks the 40th anniversary of flight probes. It is believed that in 2007, Voyager 2 formally left the solar system and entered the area of ​​the heliopause , that is, the buffer zone separating the volume of the solar system from the interstellar space. Voyager 1 crossed the border of the system in 2013.



According to experts, the resource of radioisotope generators installed on the probes will last until about 2025. And until then, scientists will keep in touch with the devices, receiving data recorded by the instruments.

Returning to the IT topic: each Voyager is equipped with three specially designed computers that can be reprogrammed by commands from the Earth:

• Computer Command System (Computer Command System (CCS)). Two interrupt-controlled processors (interrupt type processors), with two non-volatile memory modules of 4096 18-bit words each.
• Flight Data System (FDS). Two processors with two modules of 8198 16-bit words.
• Antenna orientation and control system (Attitude and Articulation Control System (AACS)). Parameters are similar to CCS.

Storage capacity - 67 MB. The processor clock frequency is 250 kHz, on average 8000 instructions are processed per second. Compare with the parameters of the processors standing in your smartphones.

Voyagers programming language is a type of assembly language. Last time the software of the probes corresponded in 1990, after the passage of Neptune. New software allowed them to act more autonomously.

Well, a picture instead of an epilogue for last.