Searching for the Oldest Running Application

A columnist from InternetWeek has completed a search for the oldest running commercial software application. His results are interesting (note that he's mostly skipping over mainframe applications, just looking at PC-based apps).

It's got to be

Hello World!!!

Re:It's got to be

10 PRINTLN "HELLO WORLD"
20 GOTO 10

And this is filler, since my impersonation of pre-shift key BASIC triggered the lameness filter

--

Re:It's got to be

Hey, I modified a thread engineering program for a TRS-80 for a friend's machine shop back in 1981, and wrote them a new version completely from scratch in GW-BASIC in 1982. They are still using it today (although I had to port it to the IBM PC Basic compiler.) I also wrote a brute-force change gear combination searcher that took a few minutes to sift through all their possible gear combinations.

At least they've upgraded their PCs a few times since then. But the software still runs. It just runs faster (the gear calculator now has the results before the screen refreshes.)

Re:It's got to be

Ok, I'll confess -- My line 10 was really "PRINTLN "I LOVE AMY MCCRACKEN"
It was the 3rd grade, what did you expect?

--

Re:It's got to be

10 PRINTLN "HELLO WORLD"
20 GOTO 10

That's going to produce 0HELLO WORLD as repeating output, which I don't think is what you want. LN is an uninitialized variable. PRINTLN isn't a valid command, but it'll get interpreted as PRINT LN, which will display as 0.

(The scary part is that I fired up Applewin to verify those results...I was going to fire back ?SYNTAX ERROR IN 10 as a reply. I have no life. :-) )

Re:WordStar

You're not the only one. I've run into a few people using wordstar over the years. One was a guy using it on Win95 to keep track of old correspondence. The other, if you can believe it, was my computer science college professor that ran it under one of the Windows emulators for Linux!

But, by far, the oldest app I've seen was an audio console fader automation system. WordStar may pre-date it in history, but these were 8086 machines with Seagate st-225 20MB hard drives that ran Xenix. They were probably rarely turned off since the early '80s because they recorded and played back the fader movements on an early automated recording console. Everyone was afraid to turn them off in case the hard drives didn't spin back up.

Come to think of it, the timeframes of when the software and hardware was available may place it into the mid- to late- 80s, but I'm sure it caught up for hours running in that time after being powered up for so long.

Re:It's got to be

i've been running this:

.LOOP:
JMP .LOOP

on my commodore 64 since 1983. i'm still waiting for it to finish. maybe if i got a faster computer.

I always liked...

...going into radio Shack and typing

10 Print "Shit!";
20 Goto 10

and walking away.

later, that evolved into:

10 Print "Fuck You!!";
20 y$=inkey$:if y$="" OR y$"" then 10

which basicly grabs the 'break' from the buffer before it can be processed, requiring a reboot to clear.

Adding the line (before executing) :

basica fuck.bas /r

to the autoexec.bat ran the program from boot.

Truly evil, we were.

Mainframe

note that he's mostly skipping over mainframe applications, just looking at PC-based apps

That makes a biiig difference. I'm contracted out to a bank that has a mainframe system thats been in operation for around 30 years, beating the program her found.

Re:Mainframe

Don't mean to be nitpicky, but if you'd bothered to read the whole article you'd have noticed that he mentioned a mainframe program called DATAMOD that dates back to October 1971, which is over 30 years ago. As the main focus of his article was PC applications, however, his article did not give much information on mainframe apps.

Re:Mainframe

My girlfriend's mom wrote some of the first conversions of actuarial tables to mainframe, from books, in the 1950s and 1960s (all done w/ punch cards and machine language, of course) at a life insurance company in Mass. The company was still running a lot of her orgininal code when she retired a couple of years ago.

Re:Mainframe

My girlfriend's mom wrote some of the first conversions of actuarial tables to mainframe, from books, in the 1950s and 1960s (all done w/ punch cards and machine language, of course) at a life insurance company in Mass. The company was still running a lot of her orgininal code when she retired a couple of years ago.

This is obviously an apocryphal story.

Who can spot the inconsistancy that gives this fakery away?




Exactly.

We all know /.'ers don't have girlfriends.

Re:Mainframe

Hey now.. A lot of slashdotters have girlfriends.. They just don't look like girls.

Oldest and most influential....

Solitaire

My Dad Still uses Lotus 123

On a 8088. It works so why change. Which is actually really true. Sometimes why do you need to upgrade to a faster computer if all you want to do is run 1 application that is simple and does the job quite well. Lotus 123 for DOS on an 8088 is quite stable and fast to. (it feels faster then running excel on a 1ghz system) The 8088 and lotus 123 is bassicly the right tool for the right job. Why complain or tinker with it.

Re:My Dad Still uses Lotus 123

bassicly the right tool for the right job. Why complain or tinker with it.

You must be new here... [/tongueincheek]

Re: Good for your dad!

Sometimes, it really does amaze me that the computer industry is so worked up over what to do with recycling of old systems and all the computers getting thrown in the garbage - yet they act like getting more use out of the older ones isn't possibly an option.

I'm currently working for a small company that reclaims and refurbishes old Apple Mac systems (everything from the black and white 9" screen SE's and Classics to the first generation of PowerMacs). People give the things to us for free all the time, since they're written off as useless junk. In fact, we're able to get them configured as pretty nice little "starter" systems for students, small children, and public-access machines for the elderly in retirement homes.

Some of the best "classic" games and educational titles of all time ran on these computers, and there's no reason a 3 or 4 year old kid today won't find them just as exciting as kids did back when these machines first came out!

Remember Oregon Trail? How about KidPix, Print Shop Deluxe, Lode Runner, Prince of Persia, and all the Scholastic educational games/software?

For the older folks, there's plenty of great freeware and shareware: monopoly, GNU chess (who even needs a color screen for chess?), backgammon, card games, Shanghai (the matching tile game), and much more.

Claris Works runs quite well on the old Macs too, and gives students a real inexpensive solution for typing papers, not to mention simple spreadsheets.

At some point in time, I plan on putting together a nice system build for old DOS machines too, full of kids' games and educational titles - and see if we can't give some old 8088's and 286/386 machines a new life too.

Those old systems were built like tanks compared to what's offered today. Look at how heavy a real IBM keyboard (or machine) is! Small children aren't going to break one of those as easily as they will some cheap eMachines mini-tower.

Re:My Dad Still uses Lotus 123

Wait till the drive releases it's magic smoke, or wait until the CPU calls it quits. While it's been reliable, it'll eventually fry itself out...

Because sometimes there is a better way

The situation I always like to bring up is libraries. A perfectly aceptable method for doing research that worked for year and years was card catalogues and physically searching through journals. You can still do it, there is no reason why it doesn't work. However, it is MUCH more efficient to have a computer do the search for you, and better still if the whole journal is electronic so you can do full text searches, and just download the article straight to your computer.

Our university has done this. The physical card catalogue has been completely eliminated, all searches are electronic now. Also, while there are still floors of physical journals, many of the popular ones are available in PDF format for download.

It is amazing how much more efficient it makes research. It's even better because I can tie it in to databases of things that aren't even contained in this particular library.

Some times people get so caught up in the fact that the way they do something "works just fine" that they miss the fact that there is a much more efficient way to do it.

Time marches on

I still play Nuclear War (1989) and I think Project Space Station (1987) was one of the best strategy games ever--a precursor of RTS. But I am addicted to multi-tasking and I am quite fond of the research efficiency gains you point out.

Most people don't need to upgrade and become a slave to hype. I'm running everything off a 800 MHz system (4 years) and I intend to squeeze the last drop of energy out of it(8 years or more). I'm not on a more modern system or OS because Mr. Bill Gates slammed the door on my Dragon Dictate system... a 1997 discrete speech program that doesn't get along with XP.

Why would people upgrade these days? High quality RAM, a decent video card and a decent hard drive will handle everything for people that don't give a flying fsck about games and are mature enough to just stay put. I'll probably get a flat panel monitor within the next couple years but that fits with one of my subobjectives--don't get a PC that consumes so much power that it burns my house down.

Re:My Dad Still uses Lotus 123

why change? maybe because excel xp has hundreds of more options than lotus 123 and is easier to share work.

For a brief period of time my mother-in-law entertained the notion of becoming a medical transcriptionist. The doctors rattle something off into a handheld recorder, you get the tape, you type it out. One of those on-the-side businesses.

So we do some investigation and one of the things she'd need is WordPerfect. I don't remember if this was a requirement (like she'd be sending these files digitally) or if it was just the "accepted thing", but we started to research how much it would cost to get her WordPerfect, which we though was sorta asinine since her PC already had Word (came with the machine of course).

Then we found out that you really had to have WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS. You know, the one with the blue screen and a slow, VGA-based preview mode.

Of course I didn't know then how in the world you would even acquire a legitimate copy of that. Or even if it was possible.

We found someone else in the business and asked her why in the world this ancient program was still being used. She told us that the legal and medical professions still use WP5.1 religiously both because everyone's so used to it and because everything in the program since that version just slows them down. Remember, these people are the ones typing the volumes and volumes of legal and medical documents out there. They want productivity and they want it now. They don't want to wait the half second for Word to figure out whatver it's doing in the background to render bullet points.

WordPerfect released WP6 for DOS at one point, probably the most advanced graphical application DOS ever saw. But of course few if anyone wanted that - they either fell into the camp which wanted the lean and mean DOS WP5.1 or the people who were already seeing how nice Windows made everything look already. To this end WordPerfect even released a WP5.1+ to give WP5.1 compatibility with WP5.1 documents. WordPerfect was also pretty good about at least trying to be on every desktop platform, like OS/2 and Linux. WordPerfect was then bought and sold about five times, and for the last three or four major versions has been on board the sinking ship that is Corel. Hell, Corel even tried to pit it on Java at one point.

So the short version of the story is - the reason people don't want to change is that sometimes the options slow them down. Plus there is such a thing as version lock-in syndrome. Ask any psychotic Counter-Strike player which version is better and they'll tell you "man, every release since version (whatever) sucks!"

Re:My Dad Still uses Lotus 123

I know a couple of medical transciptionists, and WP5.1 is king. Why? Because when you're typing 120 WPM you can't afford to reach for the mouse. Because they all have these medical dictionary modules that are written for WP5.1. And because when your word processor is your job, you really don't give a rat's ass if it has a GUI or not.

A further study might include...

...reasons for why really old software/hardware is still in use today. Many people complain that businesses are using heavily outdated software and hardware. These complaints claim that using outdated tools indicates lethargy on the part of the business or organization. However, that is not always so.

Idealy, when programmers write code or engineers design systems, they do it with the ages in mind. While plenty of software developers think that code is throw-away, there are some like myself who like to write enduring code. Perhaps a lot of these ancient systems were just designed so well that their obsolescence is still a long ways off. In that case, the oldest software and hardware is probably to be the most coveted. You usually don't find systems or software today that lasts for decades (and if you're on Microsoft's leash, you're lucky if your software lasts for a year).

It'd be really interesting to see the results. Are these systems really good or are the owners just really lazy?

Re:A further study might include...

Idealy, when programmers write code or engineers design systems, they do it with the ages in mind.

Knowingly or unknowingly, you have said something really insightful there. I had an "aha" moment after reading your comment. Consider a Microsoft programmer working on Windows 2003. He knows that Microsoft is already working on the new improved Windows 2005, and the developer on Windows 2005 knows that plans are already under way for Windows 2007.

Now where is the motivation to build reliability and security into the system when you know the code you are writing will not have a usage of more than two years (or so Microsoft hopes, since ideally they would like everyone to upgrade to the version du juor instantly).

No wonder the products that come out seem like they were written in a half baked manner.

Re:A further study might include...

This though fits right into our society's view on everything being disposable.

Re:A further study might include...

Consider a Microsoft programmer working on Windows 2003. He knows that Microsoft is already working on the new improved Windows 2005, and the developer on Windows 2005 knows that plans are already under way for Windows 2007.

Do you really think they throw it away each time? Unless you're working on something that's pure marketing fluff, code written for one release has a very good chance of being around in the future.

It's a law of nature that code always lives longer than you expect - the cost of throwing things away and rewriting from scratch is almost always worse than the downside of massaging it to deal with the next requirement. It's the mark of good software that it's ameanable to that - unless you're writing a throw-away bit of toy code for yourself, you should assume that anything you check in is probably going to be around in some form for years...

Happened to me recently when doing consultancy work for a company I used to work for 10 years ago. They still have modules which are pretty much unchanged since I wrote them way back when as a new grad, minus the inevitable bug fixes and new features.

Re:A further study might include...

The cost of upgrading is also a major factor. I work with financial institutes, many which use mainframes and some with cobol programmers, etc. All the backend systems still work, work in a reliable time, and have yet to really break. Why spend the tens of millions of dollars and the years to upgrade to a new high-end DB, and reprogram an entire backend to a system which isn't broke in the firstplace?? And, if you decide to change, how secure are you to copy over the financies for hundreds of thousands of people and ensure that you aren't creating lawsuits (missing money) or pissing off the SEC (bad reports due to corrupt data)?

Re:A further study might include...

As someone who currently runs 1 app on DOS and two apps on Windows 3.11 and has to support NT 4.0 and Mac OS 9 there are a few issues, in addition to the very accurate ones that you state.
I manage a facility that does high-end graphics printing, and if I have a printer that is 12 years old and still makes brilliant prints, but it hasn't been marketed in 10 years then no one will write modern software to support it. So I'm "stuck" with DOS. The issue that worries me, then, is massive hadware failure on the PC, cause I have to find a pre-PCI bus computer. The second issue is data format closure ( read proprietary data formats and character settings) until we have ISO character support and XML or open data storage standards we can't have real data portability, and without data portability you are trapped in a legacy codebase. It is probably a well written peice of software ( or you wouldn't have built so much of your company around it) but it is still a trap. PROPRIETARY data formats are always a trap.

Re:A further study might include...

Witness UNIX and it's clones. MS would have you believe that running an OS or using programing tools from 1995 is wrong but I somehow don't think everyone around here would agree.

TW

Does he use the Spinocylinder?

My chiropractor is still using Medi-Soft on his 286-10MHz with 512-Kbit RAM and an old 40-Mbyte drive, running DOS 5. He refuses to spend the time to learn something new.

Yeah, that's a guy I want to be adjusting my back. Probably doesn't believe in that 'new fangled' aspirin for aches, either.

Re:Does he use the Spinocylinder?

Shit, he believes in chiropractic for starters. Doesn't that worry you enough?

How about you?

Hey slashdot community, what's the oldest program you've seen running at the office or home, not counting classic games? Personally I've been using Bank Street Filer on Apple //c (c. 1983) to catalog my game collection, just for kicks. Most of my collection is classic games, so it seems appropriate...

lharc.exe

I'm still using lharc.exe by good ol Yoshi.

The archives are a little larger, and it does not take the longer file names, but for compressing one or two files it is much smaller and much easier to use than old dos PKZip (which needs 3 much larger files to do what lharc.exe does) or any Winzip version.

From his previous article ...

"The winner will receive $25"

I bet he must have got gazillion entries ..

Longest running app?

Definitely the Blue Screen of Death!

Slashdotted...

Well we know it's definitely NOT his web server!

Scorched Earth myself

I can submit Scorched Earth [classicgaming.com] myself. I had totally forgotten that my PC had an internal speaker until I ran it.

Re:Scorched Earth myself

Dude... its time to upgrade [employees.org]! Scorched 3D complete with an OpenGL renderer!

MS Flight SImulator

Microsoft Flight Simulator: A Century of Flight [msn.com].

I'd say 100 years is a fairly long-running app.

Re:MS Flight SImulator

Well, before Windows 2000 there was Windows 3.
I guess that would make it 2000 years old now.

How about version numbers? Emacs is on 21.something now. I think AutoCad is up in the 16 range by now.

Damn

In the entrance to my work, we have little pc set up running a dos based virus scanner app. It's been there for at LEAST 10 years. I've never seen a single person use it. About 2 weeks ago they FINALLY got rid of it. I have NEVER seen monitor burn that bad...it looked like the app had gone monochrome but it was still plain as day.

Oldest App, or Oldest RUNNING app...

I read the article the other way.
I'm thinking it might be much more interesting to throw the mainframes, etc back into the fray, and find the oldest continually running app...

It just might turn out to be a copy of Novell server sitting in somebody's closet, or inside a wall... [techweb.com]

I suppose we'd need to qualify exactly what an application is, and perhaps we'd find an example where it didn't meet the criteria when switched on way-back-when, but has had bits added to it along the way, and now does?

Re:My Mom

Hey, I've been saying since the first release of Windows 3.0 -- if you're working solely with text, you're going to be better off in a text environment!

In a way, I think Windows took a step backwards when they eliminated MS-DOS and made Windows the whole OS. I mean, getting rid of the old 16-bit DOS code made sense, but things might have been more flexible if they just put some work into a major DOS upgrade - and made Windows '9x launch from DOS optionally, like Win 3.x did.

Look at all the work MS had to put into making the DOS compatibility layer run as many older apps as possible. Instead of that, I would have preferred a Win environment with no "DOS commnand prompt" or "DOS box" of any kind. If you want to run DOS apps, you just do it without typing "win" to start Windows up.

The GUI does make things easier for *desktop publishing*, where you're working with multiple fonts and graphics interspersed with your text. For "typewriter simulating", like most offices still do with their computers, a GUI is just needless overhead!

Is your application running?

Well you'd better go catch it!

n00b!

It's SyncSort

The oldest commercial application, i.e. one sold as a software product, is SyncSort. [syncsort.com] SyncSort was one of the very first commercial third-party software applications. It was also the first to be patented. SyncSort, Inc. was formed in 1969.

SyncSort was the first useful sort program to break the O(N log N) barrier (yes, this is possible, CS101 kiddies). This was a huge win for mainframe shops with their big tape-to-tape sort jobs. That's what all those spinning tape reels were doing on early computers. SyncSort cut days off some batch jobs.

You can buy current versions of SyncSort. The old versions for IBM mainframes are still available, and you can get it as an Active-X control for Windows. So that's a 34-year old product, little changed in decades and still doing a useful job today.

I did maintenance programming on a competitive product, UNIVAC Exec II Sort/Merge, around 1969. SyncSort was faster. They really did have a better, and patented, algorithm.

Re:It's SyncSort

> SyncSort was the first useful sort program to break the O(N log N) barrier (yes, this is possible, CS101 kiddies).

Just because it uses radix sort it doesn't mean it isn't O(N log N). The radix itself is O(log N); you have to look at each entry at least once.

Remember, we're talking theoretical issues here (since you brought up the O(.) notation).

Go outside

Go outside USA and you will find tons of such applications still being used.

Remember, only in the Western world is software/hardware cheap when measured against the cost of living.

In India, for example, a cheap PC would cost more than what most people earn in a month. I bet there would be many schools and homes with old PCs and software simply because it costs too much to upgrade.

Norton Commander for DOS

It's not the oldest, but I still put Norton Commander for DOS (circa 1989) on boot floppies. A two pane file browser, an editor and lap-link file transfer in under 80K.

If I still had an older version, it did most of the same stuff in about 53k. it was from around 1985.

NT4 Uptime?

One reader sent me screenshots to prove that his Windows NT v4 server is still up and running of 1,079 days with nary a reboot, and being used to serve up IP addresses for about 3,500 client workstations.

Just the far end of the bell curve? A quick photoshop job on the screenshots? Or... maybe Windows is of some use as a server OS after all?

Re:NT4 Uptime?

I'd say it's more a function of the service (DHCP?) than anything. You can't much simpler than DHCP. I'd never expect to see an NT domain controller, file/print server, Exchange, or IIS server make it more than a couple of months without a reboot.

That's like being proud of a UNIX/Linux server for having a 3-year uptime when all it does is serve ntp queries! The lack of a power interruption is more impressive than the machine staying up.

TeX

Most mathematicians and computer scientists use a program called TeX [tug.org] to typeset their papers. TeX takes a .tex file as input and spits out a .dvi file, which can be postprocessed by drivers to produce PostScript or PDF files. TeX was written by professor Donald Knuth [stanford.edu] of Stanford University; the current version is still essentially similar to the 1983 version!

TeX has a horrible syntax and funky limitations, but there are so many available packages for it (such as LaTeX and the associated packages) as well as external applications (BibTeX) and tons of mathematical files made for it that it just cannot be replaced.

Some crazy people [eleves.ens.fr] even use TeX to [cof.ens.fr]
typeset a newspaper and a personnel directory.

Law Firms

I did some work for a law firm a few years ago. They were using an MS-DOS package called "Juris" to handle all their time billing. As you can imagine, this was the #1 priority mission-critical application for them. Juris is allegedly the 800 pound gorilla in the legal sector.

IIRC, Juris was written in 1986, or something like that. The company that makes it was getting ready to roll out a "test" version now featuring - WINDOWS support. *Gasp!* This was a few years ago.

I wager that the oldest running application is probably in a factory somewhere, producing something very low tech. Like an 8088 hooked up to a lathe trimming brown rubber toilet plunger bulbs. Those manufacturing guys rarely upgrade, and arguably never need to.

that's nothing

i want to know who the oldest living slashdot poster is ;-)

Embedded software lasts longest

My oldest still running apps are embedded in products that were introduced in 1983, performing oil and gas well monitoring and control. Solar-powered, Z80 microprocessors, deployed waaay out in the middle of nowhere. I suspect this code will continue to run until the hardware fails or the well runs dry.

Oldest running Apple apps .. that are STILL in use

One of the things I suppose validated (for Steve Wozniak) the Apple I and lives on in the iPod is the game; breakout.

But, how old is Visicalc [about.com] for the Apple II IIe or even I - wasn't it the first app for the Apple or maybe Turtle?

I believe the date for these programs would be 1977. (Visicalc 1979)

I know of several college professors at Clemson that use Apple IIe's for milk volume analysis and "calling" the cows in for milking at the Lamaster dairy Agricultural arm of Clemson too. I also know one professor that still uses VisiCalc.

And the rest of the world?

When I was working in Mexico in the mid-90s as an independent consultant one of my clients (a small hospital in northern Mexico) had an application that they used to track patient payments. I'm not sure what it was based on, maybe dBase? Anyway, it used some sort of database. But it's possible it was propietary.

This was 1994-ish and the IT guy there told me that they had been running that thing for about 7 years. That means it had been in use since '87 or so.

About four months ago I got an email from one of my old subcontractors, who is now employed full time at that hospital (which is not small anymore). His note was unrelated to this application, which I did not touch or otherwise use. He was asking me somethng about one of the other systems I did work on there. But he mentioned it in passing, and I just remembered when I saw this article.

So that means that they've been using it for the better part of 15-16 years.

When you're third world, you tend to keep stuff around until it breaks =)

I win

I have an ancient Abacus that was bought from an medievel marketplace - and I still use it to do my business tax!

Oh, man...

do I feel old at the mention of "PIM"...those were gaining popularity when I got into computers (1993'ish) while in college.

About 5 years back (maybe longer) I worked for a company that moved off an HP 1000 for their cad/cam and accounting/payroll for the sewing plant.

Know what finally did the HP 1000 in? Not backups, not parts, not software or ability to function...but politics!

(sigh) {
Was a few more paragraphs that got eaten from clicking a link in my mail client...frack! grrr!}
.

"Oldest" type stuff

Speaking of "oldest" tech things...it would be interesting to find out what the oldest telephone number in continuous use in the US is or the oldest email address.

Tandy 102

Here at my desk I have a Tandy 102, circa early 1980's (NOT my primary machine). Its OS is by Microsoft, and is reported to contain the last production code BillG personally worked on. A few K of RAM, a few K of ROM, and an 8(I think) line, 40-column screen. You can see some of the bad ideas which were stolen from CPM and enshrined in DOS, like 8.3 filenames (files in RAM) and the three letter filename extension gives file type.

It still works, and its spreadsheet easily uses relative cell references. That nifty little feature seems to have gotten lost in MS's spreadsheets between then and now. Today, one of my cow orkers needed to do something in a spreadsheet ... ``relative references!'' I told him. Half an hour later, none of us could figure out how to do it in Excel.

Sometimes, the old stuff is good enough to warrent putting up with its limitations. In this case, maybe not. But MS's spreadsheets have gone way downhill since the early '80's.

They need a decent Novell admin!

From the article: "They can't really upgrade their NetWare servers because they have production applications that run on the older versions, you know, those older versions that still make use of IPX, a protocol that Novell has moved away from. Their clients are all a mishmash and need to be refreshed, but they figured they would wait until they could roll out a new version of Windows. Plus, to make matters worse, there was a period of about a year when they didn't have anyone on staff who really knew Novell"

Novell has not moved away from IPX. It has been and still will be supported in future versions. I'm teaching 6.0 and it still uses IPX/SPX for several functions. They need an admin with a clue!

Neumann still uses a Commodore PET

I visited Neumann [neumann.com] in Berlin and they used a Commodore PET and some ancient software to measure the frequency response of microphones in their anechoic chamber. This was several years ago but I believe they still use it.

They also used a 40+ year old measurement microphone to calibrate it.

burris

Old source

It is not running the software, but I am stil intermittenlty patching code whose copyringht statement at the head (written by me) says "Copyright 1984. We still have users of that software, they still find bugs with new hardware, we still fix them. Admittedly, that 1984 software is not much in use, but 1994 software is still definitely mainstream support (the article regards Win98 as incredibly old).

Character is important.

From the article: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." And that's as correct as anything I've ever heard.

Here at my job, we have such a mixture of different computers dating from the '70's to just two months ago. To squeeze every possible bit of value out of the money we spend, this company has never put a computer out of commission, partly because doing so could wreak havoc on our system, considering how ad hoc it is, characteristic of things that started out small and then grew, and grew, and grew. That's how our network is... and nobody around here is brave enough to make drastic changes.

Besides, we've got a huge investment in various software packages and custom programs that translate data between them. These run on so many different hardware configurations and operating systems that it isn't even funny.

In fact, the way some computers are attached to each other is funny... there are the old coaxial cables, there are newer cat5 cables, there are RS232 cables and "LapLink" cables. Hell, there are even little boards that one of our guys here built in his garage some years ago, to get some of our older dinosaurs communicating. Each of these things was put into place one by one, to solve a very particular short term problem, each turned into a very permanent part of our organization, and all are still functional and are being used extensively.

There are a bunch of newer boxes here, made out of computer scraps that people have "donated" over the years, running Linux, and in my spare time I like to write scripts to automate all kinds of repetitive tasks. I like the way our network is because it gives the thing a lot of character, kind of like old towns have, as opposed to cities that are engineered onto a huge grid. And I like to think of this network as a town in the wild west... It's so much fun to screw around with these petty things, but then, we all bring our junk cars and old hot rods into work on the weekends to fix them, or to take parts off and sell them; we all have this way of doing petty little shit all the time, and believe me, we love every moment of it!