Windows 3.11 administrator required

[Paul_s]

Posted couple of weeks ago..

https://archive.is/2024.01.28-015512...ntur/C00929028

[TCD]

It was all over the news 2 days ago in Germany: https://www.heise.de/news/Deutsche-B...s-9611543.html

[Thomas Richter]

This was already circulated in various other forums, in particular in Germany. It provides a glimpse on the state of German industry, and the German railroad in particular. On the plus side, they no longer require floppy disks to load the seat reservations on the trains these days.

[dreadnought]

Most of these articles explain it's not as kerrazy as it sounds, as it actually makes sense to use an extremely well tested, versatile solution which just works.

[Daedalus]

Indeed, many industries are similar, with very long lifecycles of equipment that don't coincide with the relatively rapid turnover in the world of PC development. The amount of time it takes to develop and validate a new system means it's practically obsolete when it's released, particularly when bespoke hardware is involved. And of course, time is money. When something works just fine it can be difficult to justify the cost in terms of development salaries, prototyping etc. to replace a system that doesn't need to be replaced.

For example, in my previous job, we were building and using medical instruments controlled by MS-DOS-based 486 systems with custom ISA cards up until a few years ago. These are instruments designed with an expected life of perhaps 25-30 years, so bleeding edge technology was usually considered risky, and current but well-established tech used instead. As a result of this perception of outdated tech however, it was decided when development of the replacement instrument started, that the most up-to-date PCs would be used, so we started development on the just-released Windows Vista. When that development process was complete, Vista had already been discontinued. Switching to Windows 7 delayed the release of the instrument by at least a year because it was such a massive change in terms of regulatory approval, and also introduced the requirement for extensive testing for every Windows update that was applied. Meanwhile, the MS-DOS workhorses were still working day in, day out with very few problems and no functional need for replacement.

[Retro1234]

If it ain't broke why fix it? Look at the new system they brought in for the Royal Mail.

Probably a sweat job. VirtualBox and Goteks if needed. I wouldn't want to mess about with TCP/IP stacks on Windows 3.1 personally but if you have it setup once just clone it.

[Megalomaniac]

This isn't unique. The departure boards on the platforms of UK train stations continued to use the original system developed on the BBC Micro well into the 2000s. Initially they replaced them with the same software running on emulation. More niche, the main software used to administer Scrabble tournaments in the UK at least as late as 2010 still used Windows 3.1, as it was the easiest way to get it to communicate with the printer. I guess using old systems doesn't create as much work for programmers and systems analysts of variable quality, and doesn't create as many procurement jobs in government. It's sad that we've become such a throwaway society on so many things though - supposedly the world already has enough clothes for over 40 billion people, yet we keep changing fashions every six months (not that you'd know it to see my wardrobe. Heck, there are probably twice as many actual wardrobes as the world needs).

[gimbal]

"Knowledge of legacy operating systems and Windows managers (especially MS DOS and Windows for Workgroups)"

So important, it had to be mentioned TWICE. That really grinds my gears. At least re-read your stuff once :/

[petran]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

supposedly the world already has enough clothes for over 40 billion people, yet we keep changing fashions every six months (not that you'd know it to see my wardrobe. Heck, there are probably twice as many actual wardrobes as the world needs).

Even worse, companies destroy the brand new unused and unsold clothes instead of providing the needy

[nogginthenog]

Ticketmaster originally ticketing system running on VAX hardware. They were still these when I worked there briefly 20 years ago.

The hardware was getting old and difficult to maintain. Their solution? Run the ticketing system using VAX emulators.

As far as I know this is still the case to this day.

[derSammler]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

This was already circulated in various other forums, in particular in Germany. It provides a glimpse on the state of German industry, and the German railroad in particular.

No, it does not. It just shows that for some use-cases, you don't need the latest hard- and software. This would actually be a very important lesson to learn for many people and companies instead of using systems that are attacked every day thanks to zero-day exploits.

Also, you would be surprised how many embedded devices still in use today run ROM-DOS.

https://www.tuxera.com/products/rom-dos/
https://www.taskit.de/produkte/embed...dos-loesungen/

[Higgy]

I installed Win 3.11 on a PC/104 (supercharged 486 style industrial PC standard) last year.
Control system in question has output diagnostics via optical fibre and the control card/software needs old PC.

PC/104 is pretty interesting. The CPUs can run much faster than the originals ever did.
But what are you going to do, if you have a multimillion pound system, yes in an ideal world you would just replace it but money is usually the issue.
Least we don't use 5 1/2" floppies like others I see still do

[malko]

Originally Posted by derSammler

No, it does not. It just shows that for some use-cases, you don't need the latest hard- and software. This would actually be a very important lesson to learn for many people and companies instead of using systems that are attacked every day thanks to zero-day exploits.

Also, you would be surprised how many embedded devices still in use today run ROM-DOS.

https://www.tuxera.com/products/rom-dos/
https://www.taskit.de/produkte/embed...dos-loesungen/