Nuclear silos… is that early dos system I believe?
As long as things are not connected and not trying to add newer stuff , what’s the problem?
Still booting after all these years: The people stuck using ancient Windows computers
Submitted 10 months ago by fne8w2ah@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250516-the-people-stuck-using-ancient-windows-computers
Comments
LoveSausage@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months ago
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Stuck? What can you do that I can’t on Windows 7?
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 10 months ago
Read an article, apparently - it explains why the old systems are still in use.
Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Ancient industrial machines use ancient windows computers. This has been known forever. There’s a whole niche industry of very expensive ram and hard drives and other components keeping this machines going
Krudler@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yeah man. Details are going to be fuzzy here, but I think it was only in recent memory where Boeing upgraded the planes in Japan to no longer need floppy disks.
Mpatch@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yes i still use floppy disks regularly for my cnc plasma table
Treczoks@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I run a computer on Win7 at work, because it needs some important legacy software. It can’t be containered because it has a nasty licence manager.
PeteWheeler@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I would still be using Windows 7 if it was safe to connect to the internet.
I can’t believe government systems are just open to cyber security like that.
Are there not cyber terrorists for some teenager that has tried to do anything with these unsecured systems?
Smoogs@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Just slap some bit defender on it. That’s all that we have to do with windows 10 and we’re all good to go. Hey if Linux can run on the same box for all these years and be safe theres no reason why any windows system can’t be safe with a simple add on.
Windows 11 is just a tmp chip added to board
Srsly that is all. Something smaller than a thumb drive changed and they are trying to convince the world to make more waste. It’s fucking stupid. Microsoft can eat fat ass.
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Why would Windows 7 not be “safe” to connect to the internet? Do you understand how any of this works?
Krudler@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Lemmy is overloaded with people that puff up and want to present like they know things about tech, when they know basically nothing.
Get a firewall, get basic safe practices in place, if you think that your OS is there to protect you, you are a tech foooooooooooooool
M0oP0o@mander.xyz 10 months ago
No, and that is saddly the standard these days. Its all just bullshit sales tatics and a weird take on what risks are and are not involved with legacy tech.
theywilleatthestars@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I’d still be using Windows 7 if I could.
the_trash_man@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I mean, you can if you want to
isVeryLoud@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It’s not safe and all that stuff.
KulunkelBoom@lemm.ee 10 months ago
MS DOS 6.6 for me - I enjoy the power of a 286 processor and much smaller instruction sets. :O
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Luxury. All I had was a 186.
KulunkelBoom@lemm.ee 10 months ago
with a 5.25 as A and B.!
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I’m one of the lucky ones with an 8086 that clearly saw the downgrade to 186.
AMD only just recently passed that with their 9000 series CPUs and Intel has only had better ones for a bit longer.
OrteilGenou@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Vic 20 here, I just like a green font
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
I like the little typo … c:// :)
the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world 10 months ago
“stuck” more like happy to not have to deal with the last 15-ish years of microsoft ruining everything they previously excelled at.
CherryBullets@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
They lost me when they removed the start button on the left side of the taskbar in version 8.1 (I think it was) to… Be cool with the kids (I think 8.1 was supposed to be touch screen friendly)? I don’t even know, but I went back to Windows 7 for a long while.
The backlash with the start button was so huge that they put it back on the taskbar in Windows 10 (at least mine has it and is the reason I got Windows 10). I’m currently refusing to update to Windows 11, because it apparently crashes when playing certain video games and I’m not about to have the other trash bugs that come with it, which I’ve been seeing posted on Microsoft help forums when I search for Windows 10 related questions. Fuck that noise, I don’t want to deal with it.
Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
They seemingly wanted to design the entire interface around touchscreen 2-in-1s. If you went in a Microsoft store around the time windows 8 came out, they were leaning really hard into the 2-in-1s. I got a surface pro 3 at that time that I used to take handwritten notes in school, and the windows 8 interface was honestly awesome with that use case. On my desktop PC, though, I held out updating from 7 until windows 10.
Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Windows 8 removed the start button, 8.1 brought back most all of the “legacy” UI features (which still persist today).
the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I have had better luck with game compatibility using proton on linux than I had with win 11
OmgItBurns@discuss.online 10 months ago
Never thought I’d miss Ballmer, but here we are.
the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yeah. Its a gross feeling isn’t it?
bluewing@lemm.ee 10 months ago
I had a 486DX running DOS for writing and editing CAM programs for CNC mills, lathes, pipe bender, and a laser cutter. And for funsies, an even older Macintosh that booted from a 5 1/4" floppy that ran a CMM, (co-ordinate measuring machine). And the software for the CMM ran from another 5 1/4" floppy.
This was about 2017 before I retired as a toolmaker.
lmuel@sopuli.xyz 10 months ago
I know it’s not exactly the point of the article but for a lot of things, I reckon a good amount of ‘innovation’ was pretty pointless. I personally don’t think I ever needed anything that Office 2003 can’t do… (Of course I don’t use any MS office to begin with but you get the point)
Twitchy1@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
Everything beyond the Dewey decimal system is/was pretty unnecessary, imo. We created a way to organize and “quickly” locate information stored in a physical format.
The near complete lack of manual labor has had many long reaching effects on society.
I type this on my brand new flagship phone…
gamer@lemm.ee 10 months ago
I’ve been trying tk get family to switch to Linux, but some are irrationally attached to MS Word. I wonder if Office 2003 will run in Wine?
MrRazamataz@lemmy.razbot.xyz 10 months ago
I’ve had success with Office 2010 under Wine.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I’ve heard LibreOffice has settings that make it look like Word
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
=Let(), Lambda and Regex were good additions to Excel imo
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
there’s a word for those people: awesome
windows xp was peak; running anything before xp is legendary
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Idk, it was horrendously insecure, would freeze a lot, and missing creature comforts like window tiling.
If they kept refining Win7 it would’ve been great.
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
Idk, it was horrendously insecure, would freeze a lot, and missing creature comforts like window tiling.
It was secure enough for its time. That’s what people don’t realize, they look at the past through a modern lens. You gotta look at it from the time it was released. There’s a reason mainstream consumer-focused Windows editions dropped DOS and moved to the NT kernel. XP was the first real consuner version of Windows based on XP.
If they kept refining Win7 it would’ve been great.
They did, it was called “Windows 8” and Nobody liked it.
cuzit@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
Technically, they did, and it was not great.
eleitl@lemm.ee 10 months ago
I ran Linux 1994ish. Amiga OS before. Amstrad CPC 464 before. A friend ran Sinclair Z80, that was the first system I had access to.
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
aside from radio shack and texas instruments that i used at camp, i think i was sadly too young to do anything but windows 3.1 :( our first computer was a tandy sensation in the early 90s and i didn’t really play with linux until maybe the mid 2000s
except for playing with apple IIe and radio shack computers through school and camp, that is.
Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months ago
Why not? Still using Windows 7 on one of my ThinkPads. It’s a solid system, if you know what your doing and how to use is safely.
gamer@lemm.ee 10 months ago
and how to use is safely.
Such as by disconnecting the ethernet and power cables
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
When you get your IT knowledge from the '90s movie Hackers…
Gibibit@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a bumper crop of level 10 CVEs in the latest and “greatest” version of Windows 7 that will never get patched. Unless you have one of those special enterprise licenses that they keep updating.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
The elevator was running Windows XP.
Clearly a extreme case of overengineering. An elevator has no business running more than a few microcontrollers.
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
But how else can it be safe to connect to the internet?
MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
You need to be on-site to fix it anyway, just access the debug port.
GenosseFlosse@feddit.org 10 months ago
In highrises with lots of stops and users, it uses some more advanced software to schedule the optimal stops, or distribute the load between multiple lifts. A similar concept exists for HDD controllers, where the read write arm must move to different positions to load data stored on different plates.
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
This requires little more than a 286. It’s an elevator. Responding in times measured in seconds. What kind of computations do you think are required here? Imaginary quaternion matrixes? Squared?
perviouslyiner@lemmy.world 10 months ago
But how else can it book requests for priority access, and verify the credit card for whoever booked the elevator?
MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
Ah, the blossoms of unregulated wild capitalism.
Taleya@aussie.zone 10 months ago
Qube cinema servers only got off XP in 2015. They’re still on 7 though.
e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months ago
It’s probably only the screen component that is running an old version of embedded windows.
jjlinux@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
That’s what I think too. And then I see “Their systems are built into everything around us”, which basically only applies to PCs and laptops. What is built into pretty much everything around us is GnuLinux.
neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
I’m visiting my parents in my home country after many years of not being there. I’m hoping my dad’s old pentium 2 laptop is still around.
Thrawne@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I think i still have a copy of this OS. Along with NT4.0 and various others. I hoard stuff like this.
0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
I’m disturbed that an elevator is running a desktop OS. How did this happen? Did they never hear of microcontrollers?
Valmond@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I could tell you the stories of W95 & XP that runs the medical world…
viking@infosec.pub 10 months ago
My assumption would be that the display is not related to operating the elevator, but rather displaying information about businesses on the respective floors. I’ve seen those a fair few times, and since they run on isolated networks or even fully local, there’s little risk.
Thrawne@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Frighteningly, i worked as an admin at a hospitality wifi business that ran a windows box for dhcp duty. I would have to go o site, in the middle of the night, down to the basement of this hotel, and reboot the damn thing. It would die almost every week. Replaced with a linux server and never heard from them again.
tamal3@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I just found the Warcraft install disk for Windows 98 if y’all need something to do…
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
We’ve got multiple tools still on Windows 2000, happily running production. They’re on an airgapped network though, so no issues.
vivendi@programming.dev 10 months ago
Instead of using old proprietary shit you could use Linux or *BSD with a vintage desktop environment and have a blast
Something I noticed is that basic users (someone using a fucking 30 y/o OS is definitely one) have an easier time with *nix because most “technical” people are overfitted and brainwashed to the Micro$uck ecosystem
Taleya@aussie.zone 10 months ago
Dude, you clearly have no idea about proprietary and specialised hardware. Which is fine, but you’re choosing to attack people from your ignorance.
Don’t do that
vivendi@programming.dev 10 months ago
Clearly you’ve never seen the concept of Emulation, because that’s how you run ancient apps dumbass
If your workplace needs special windows 9x software and you haven’t managed to work some form of virtualized environment in place of 30+ years old hardware you should be fired
Newsflash do you really think banking COBOL systems run on fucking IBM mainframes from 1962? They’re all software emulated.
kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
If a system is extremely old you can use Alpine Linux with no desktop environment
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Instead of using old proprietary shit you could use Linux or *BSD with a vintage desktop environment and have a blast
I’m not sure you get it.
The CnC operator, for instance, didn’t choose windows; they chose the CnC machine because it’s best at making wood into shapes they need. It came with ‘a computer’ to control it. That computer had a desktop and an icon.
You see how CHOOSING THE OS wasn’t on the list? They chose - and fucking get this - A CNC MACHINE out of a printed catalogue with a 30-word write-up. The number of CnC machines with a Unix or Linux or BSD or BeOS install on them in 2000 was - drumroll please - zero.
If you want to fix that, you’re going to need a time machine. Remember to bring your flag with you.
Go learn about ReactOS, too.
Retrograde@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I would totally hang with that lady in the thumbnail lol
Fredselfish@lemmy.world 10 months ago
My wife still using windows 2000 on her laptop. Still boots and runs. She just doesn’t connect it to the internet.
shalafi@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Some might be surprised how many systems are still running on AS400s. IBM still makes and maintains IBMi, the modern iteration. My last company wrote our flagship product for these machines, all green screen. Our customers would sometimes move to our GUI product and jump right back to the prompt menus. Hey, if you gotta move fast and have a bulletproof system, text menus are the only way to fly!
By my god, the skill set for running and programming those beasts touches on almost nothing I’ve learned in 30+ years of IT work. Wish I had got experience in that part of the company, seen some solid job posts for that sorta tech.
tjsauce@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I worked with an AS400 while in vehicle logistics, those things are optimized for simple functions but high data throughput
spongebue@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I worked in the airline industry for years and learned a GUI overlay for one system and another entirely green screen system called SHARES (see if you can guess the airline). Honestly I kind of enjoyed working with those systems; there’s some refreshing “back to basics” feeling kind of like driving a manual transmission.
In my current job I’ve been using another legacy system. Well, my job was to create a relatively modern service for the legacy system to call, but none of the remaining developers knew how to use the extensions of that system that does SOAP calls. So I had to learn just enough of that legacy system to hold their hands through the parts that call my service. Kind of fun, to be honest!
shalafi@lemmy.world 10 months ago
SOAP calls
Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time.
shalafi@lemmy.world 10 months ago
People keep saying to keep these XP machines off the internet. I seriously doubt there’s much threat, especially for even older OS’s like 98 and 95. It’s the very devil just trying to browse with them, nothing out there is going to be able to attack them. Security through obscurity indeed!
Blemgo@lemmy.world 10 months ago
You are forgetting targeted attacks. A blind attack would pretty much not have much of an effect indeed, however if the attacker knows the machine, then it’s easy for the attackers to exploit these vulnerability if left “out in the open”, and cause havoc, possibly create a lot of damages or leech informations pumped into those machines via old Windows installations.
Doom@ttrpg.network 10 months ago
For a business sure.
You wanna hack my dnd campaign and some pictures of my cock? Sure whatever dude. All financial and important shit goes through my phone anyway and that’s likely to be hacked from the institutions I use.
shalafi@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I was tearing out ancient infrastructure for a new office and my eye kept going to a rectangular square box on the wall. Finally realized it was a PC! The cause of death was clear, PSU fan died, killed itself from heat. It was a form factor I had never seen, but standard nonetheless. It was running an answering machine system in DOS, still worked! Such a rare machine I’ve only found a single reference on the web and a single video about it. 1999, 486XS (I know, would kill for a DX, it’s soldered on), upgraded from 2x 2MB SIMMs to a whopping 2x 64MB SIMMs. Imagine what that would have cost in the day!
LONG story, but I got it running Windows 95b. 3.1 was just too much challenge to get it networked and happy. Much pain was removed when I got a USB floppy emulator. Can’t do jack without a floppy! Broke the network card drivers, need to start over. Had it running Doom with a legit SoundBlaster card and could RDP into over the network.
It was an amazing journey getting it all together and updated. Most of that knowledge is gone from the internet, and I sure don’t remember all the tricks. Going to be my first token ring machine! LOL, had to get parts from Romania and trash cans.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 10 months ago
Man, remember when people used to break into offices to steal the RAM?
My work experience in around 1995 was spent at a local computer firm.
At one point a group of men in balaclavas showed up, the boss stopped playing Doom long enough to cover the security camera and hand over a bunch of crumpled banknotes, and I was handed this pile of SIMMs to put in a test rig to make sure they were OK to sell.
I also had to straighten the pins on used/stolen 486 CPUs, and pretty sure at one point was taken to break into a warehouse. There was certainly nobody else in the whole building, and we loaded the van with a bunch of cheap looking boxes before taking them back to HQ.
The boss was also banging a girl in my class, which in later years I learned makes him a paedo. Times sure were simpler in 1995.
jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
I would bet there are still a few old pieces of industrial machinery around that I duct taped together by imaging an ancient PC and transferring it to a Virtual Box VM.
njordomir@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Good for them. If it works, it works. I wouldn’t connect it to the internet though.
twice_hatch@midwest.social 10 months ago
Stuck?
hperrin@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
“Stuck”
Imagine being stuck using something that works for 30 years.
the_q@lemm.ee 10 months ago
If it serves your needs then more power to them. Tech companies today more than ever make sure you keep buying.
Zier@fedia.io 7 months ago
Welcome