Slashdot Mirror
Oldest Software Seen in Production?
Ian Bevan asks: "In my last job we were replacing a legacy system, written in COBOL and running on a Fujitsu mainframe since 1985 (it was a payroll application). A bespoke database application I wrote in 1989 was still being used, unmodified, last year. What's the oldest software you know of still in production? Anybody know of anything from the 70s, or even 60s ? What's it used for?" Has anyone seen software in production that is older than they are?
My prof says that the software used to control the production of the Patriot missile over at Raytheon is running on the PDP-8.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
Last I heard (about 2 years ago now), there was some code running that I worked on once upon a time. I was at least the 8th maintainer of the code and the original code was written in the '66 to '68 range. It was originally written as I understand it in ForTran 4 and had been upgraded to ForTran 77 and enhanced over time, but the original code was still there.
As a matter of fact, one of the mainframe systems on which it ran over time was low on storage, so someone wrote a program that would strip the comments from all source files. So when I was working on it, there were almost no comments there.
The software was used to do usage accounting and resource accounting in a testing environment and basically worked flawlessly (except when features needed added or changed).
I have no sig, does anyone have one to spare?
These are systems from CCI-Triad that are circa the mid 70's. The machines are typically anywhere from full-tower to washing-machine size, and run on a Z-80 processor (original version of what is now powering a lot of the TI-80 line of calculators). They typically have 80-120 MB of disk space on disks with 8" platters, and for backup use 120MB Tandberg tapes. They communicate using bisychronous 3780 protocol to vendors, and use 40-column async terminals.
Where do you find these fossils? Try a very large percentage of auto parts stores! Just look for the ugly blue terminals with "TRIAD" stamped on them.
How do I know? I run the communications systems for one of the major auto parts chains. These damned things are older than I am! Fortunately, we are replacing everything with a new system soon, and putting Linux into every one of our stores (and our jobbers) as a terminal controller/router/desktop!