I worked in industry and most plant operators and owners are cheap SOB's. If anything important is very old and obsolete they will have spares ready to go if the machine is that important and 3rd parties contracted to do any work as needed (nobody running the machine would know how it works anyway).

Replacing some old working gear with something new can be VERY expensive and then there is the time and paperwork required to requalify it and whatever new proceedures are needed for ISO certs.

blurks wrote:

Of course not. Not a single responsibly acting business would ever do that and buy another piece of overpriced obsolete legacy hardware just to run into the same kind of issues a few weeks/months later.

Sorry, you have no idea about what's going on in businesses from small to large with specialized old expensive machines. I ask my professional customers what they need and based on that I look whether I can help them. Some need a computer that needs to run 24h per day. In that case I make sure that the product which I offer is capable of that.

By the way: why do you hate me mr. blurks? What have I done that I always deserve to be the victim of your frustration? You don't have to buy my products. Do you really think that I'm the one responsible for rising prices? Is that your conspiracy theory?? Please email me with your real name and explain: classiccomputershop at ziggo dot nl or call +31640255692 😘

blurks wrote:

henryVK wrote:

Has this situation ever actually materialised?
I'm not even being facetious, just curious if this kind of emergency situation is really all that common.

Of course not. Not a single responsibly acting business would ever do that and buy another piece of overpriced obsolete legacy hardware just to run into the same kind of issues a few weeks/months later.

You say that but some companies, such as the one I work for has software that will only run on an older system. Granted the OS is Windows XP, but still they would rather have an older dedicated machine than have to spend at least $15,000 for a new version of the software that will run on a newer OS.

There are some old industrial systems that require ISA cards ( none in the company I work for that I know of ) that of course will only run on older systems. Sure those really old systems could probably be upgraded somewhat with a bit newer hardware but new hardware is just not an option.

SpectriaForce wrote:

blurks wrote:

Of course not. Not a single responsibly acting business would ever do that and buy another piece of overpriced obsolete legacy hardware just to run into the same kind of issues a few weeks/months later.

Sorry, you have no idea about what's going on in businesses from small to large with specialized old expensive machines. I ask my professional customers what they need and based on that I look whether I can help them. Some need a computer that needs to run 24h per day. In that case I make sure that the product which I offer is capable of that.

A responsibly acting business never relies on old legacy hardware with no support for its core business functions. Businesses that do so, are not professional nor acting responsibly in terms of reliability and fail safety. They are gambling.

SpectriaForce wrote:

Take for example my IBM Industrial 486 pc of which some of you think that it's priced way too high.

I have no issue what you want to charge for a working old system. I do think some of your parts prices are a bit high like some of the Slot 1 processors, most of the ones you have are very common and can be found 1/4 to 1/3 the price. It is your business and you can charge what you want but sometimes triple the price means only one third the sales. Would hate to see your business fail because lack of sales and that can happen if you price the more common items too high. Just my opinion and yes I have run my own business and know how bad taxes can be.

blurks wrote:

A responsibly acting business never relies on old legacy hardware with no support for its core business functions. Businesses that do so, are not professional nor acting responsibly in terms of reliability and fail safety. They are gambling.

Who said this legacy hardware has no support? When the off the shelf replacement cost for the device starts at five or six figures, not to mention the disruption entailed in migrating, the cost of maintaining support internally or under contract starts to look really attractive.

The place I work at maintains late 70’s era software that runs in a virtualized terminal on your modern pc.
We have some old legacy equipment to access and port cadam data as needed and our lube racks ran off an NT 3.1 box up until 5 years ago.

Many businesses have a business need to access archival data more important/more numerous gets ported forward and virtualized, less common more proprietary can get stuck in time

blurks wrote:

SpectriaForce wrote:

blurks wrote:

Of course not. Not a single responsibly acting business would ever do that and buy another piece of overpriced obsolete legacy hardware just to run into the same kind of issues a few weeks/months later.

Sorry, you have no idea about what's going on in businesses from small to large with specialized old expensive machines. I ask my professional customers what they need and based on that I look whether I can help them. Some need a computer that needs to run 24h per day. In that case I make sure that the product which I offer is capable of that.

A responsibly acting business never relies on old legacy hardware with no support for its core business functions. Businesses that do so, are not professional nor acting responsibly in terms of reliability and fail safety. They are gambling.

Hah, don't come look at the nuclear industry then. I maintain systems from the 1960's all the way up to modern day equipment. For many pieces of equipment, computers, or software, there is no replacement. Fabricating a modern day equivalent is easily millions of dollars. I'm currently working on replacing a DEC Alpha system, and we are sitting at $55M for whole system upgrade.

blurks wrote:

SpectriaForce wrote:

blurks wrote:

Of course not. Not a single responsibly acting business would ever do that and buy another piece of overpriced obsolete legacy hardware just to run into the same kind of issues a few weeks/months later.

Sorry, you have no idea about what's going on in businesses from small to large with specialized old expensive machines. I ask my professional customers what they need and based on that I look whether I can help them. Some need a computer that needs to run 24h per day. In that case I make sure that the product which I offer is capable of that.

A responsibly acting business never relies on old legacy hardware with no support for its core business functions. Businesses that do so, are not professional nor acting responsibly in terms of reliability and fail safety. They are gambling.

I know this got rectified after it got media attention, but it's still very much worth linking here: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36385839

So yeah. No. It doesn't work like that.

I said this previously that I can understand the deal with industrial hardware to a certain degree, but I think we were talking more about consumer level hardware here in general anyways ^^

also sometimes I'm glad that certain things run on tried and tested reliable hardware and not windows 10 :p

imi wrote:

I said this previously that I can understand the deal with industrial hardware to a certain degree, but I think we were talking more about consumer level hardware here in general anyways ^^

also sometimes I'm glad that certain things run on tried and tested reliable hardware and not windows 10 :p

Industrial hardware is sometimes consumer hardware in a special box. Lots of industrial machines are automated with off the shelf hardware and custom I/O. Compared to spending the money replacing the whole unit, sustainment costs can be peanuts even if they look substantial from the outside.

some maybe yeah, but almost all industrial systems I've seen from back then are backplane based systems or other SBCs and the like I think they rarely used off the shelf consumer hardware, especially considering all the custom I/O.

maybe for lab equipment, but those would probably only require the I/O cards and software more than anything to work in whatever system you have it installed in and you wouldn't be so reliant on a specific type of system... unless like early HP stuff for example, but that is hardly consumer hardware anyways ^^

Quite a bit of the problem comes from having to recertify the equipment when you start making changes in hardware or software. Anything medical or military needs certification that it will still work exactly like the manual says since it is life or death. Quite a few of the companies that made equipment in those fields no longer exists because they got swallowed up or went bankrupt so you can't rely on them for upgrades or new solutions. Industry in general is a never ending consolidation and the winners want you to buy new $$$ and not support the old crap.

imi wrote:

some maybe yeah, but almost all industrial systems I've seen from back then are backplane based systems or other SBCs and the like I think they rarely used off the shelf consumer hardware, especially considering all the custom I/O.

maybe for lab equipment, but those would probably only require the I/O cards and software more than anything to work in whatever system you have it installed in and you wouldn't be so reliant on a specific type of system... unless like early HP stuff for example, but that is hardly consumer hardware anyways ^^

Yeah, there's a fair amount of PC/104 and SBC+backplane out there, but white box PCs have turned up connected to some seriously impressive devices.

To add to the above, this was particularly true in medical businesses.

Medical Gamma Spectrometer

I don't know what the cost of this would be. I suspect it's worth more than most cars.

via Imgflip Meme Generator

https://ww.9to5mac.com/2019/12/05/steve-jobs- … ocking-stuffer/

I dig that trackball ^^

gdjacobs wrote:

https://img.youtube.com/vi/fBr3uIE0QQc/0.jpg Medical Gamma Spectrometer […]
Show full quote

Medical Gamma Spectrometer

I don't know what the cost of this would be. I suspect it's worth more than most cars.

Haahaaa that is an old MAC PowerPC like a 6300 or 7300 series (added or G3) so NO the actual computer is not worth much, neither is that inkjet printer below it. The gamma scanner and it's interface card are worth a lot but sorry not the computer it is plugged into.

A Steve Jobs signed 3.5" floppy diskette sold for $84,115? And the signature was smeared. Either that is fake news, or I'm collecting the wrong kind of hardware.