Join the Hunt For the Government's Oldest Computer (muckrock.com)

v3rgEz writes: As the saying goes, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' If a machine is doing its job, reliably and without error, then common sense dictates that you just shouldn't mess with it. This is doubly true for computers and quadruply true for government computers. This lends itself to an obvious question: what's the government computer most in need of an upgrade? MuckRock has launched a new FOIA project to find out, and has already started receiving some interesting results.

Comments

In-use vs owned/missing

[Scoth]

I'd be curious if he has a way to differentiate active, in-use machines vs. old stuff that may just still be in the inventory roles. I helped a bit with my previous company's effort to clear out old storage and inventory and there was some pretty old equipment that had been in the closet for close to a decade, plus some stuff in their inventory records that had long since disappeared.

So I wonder if that Gateway Liberty 2000 is actually still sitting on someone's desk where the toil away with WordPerfect and Windows 3.1 every day, or if it got tossed/walked out of the building in the late 90s and no one bothered to update the records.

Intredasting

[Sax Russell 5449D29A]

A couple of years ago I heard of a late-70's VAX still being used at a small power plant. To my knowledge it controlled some sort of HVAC systems. Another old system, one I've actually seen, was a mid-80's computer of unknown make/model used to control traffic lights in a small city. It's funny, or actually impressive, to see such old systems still in use. The old-school guys that keep them running tell nice stories about flea market and eBay scavenging.

Re:Intredasting

[sphealey]

= = = A couple of years ago I heard of a late-70's VAX still being used at a small power plant. To my knowledge it controlled some sort of HVAC systems. Another old system, one I've actually seen, was a mid-80's computer of unknown make/model used to control traffic lights in a small city. It's funny, or actually impressive, to see such old systems still in use.= = =

Those systems were designed to be reliable, maintainable, and understandable by thorough professionals, so it is in no way surprising they continue to work. And in the industrial infrastructure world you don't replace equipment just because there is a shinier new version. 50 year old equipment is not uncommon in the provision-of-electricity industry and I've seen some 80 year old stuff in operation.

sPh

waste of tax-payer's money to answer these

[klindsay]

"If a machine is doing its job, reliably and without error, then common sense dictates that you just shouldn't mess with it."
"what's the government computer most in need of an upgrade?"
You've just given a great reason why some hardware is still in use, it works.
Why turn around and conclude that it needs an upgrade?

"knowing which agencies are running hardware older than I am is important"
Sure, for a very loose definition of important.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it?" Fuck off.

[imac.usr]

I hate that goddamn phrase. When the inevitable time comes when suddenly the old system *does* break, it's no longer under any support, nobody's left at the company who knows how it works, there's no budget for a modern replacement, and it has to be fixed in four hours or the company goes bankrupt. Been there, done that, ate the T-shirt after hours of working with no break for food.

People who say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" are the same idiots who brag about uptime.

Pro tip: *every* system is broken. The trick is being able to repair or work around the broken parts without disruption, not to just seal it behind a wall and rediscover it years later when trying to track down what's still pinging.

Re:"If it ain't broke, don't fix it?" Fuck off.

[Dutch Gun]

The funny thing about pithy little phrases like that is that there's inevitably a counter-phrase that works to refute it. In this case, perhaps "don't put all your eggs in one basket" would be appropriate?

There's nothing wrong with "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" as a general rule of thumb (nor of good uptime), but I'd certainly temper it with the notion that a lack of support or replacement parts can also be considered "broken", and thus in need of fixing. There's a lot of damage done by needless upgrades or "enhancements", which is what this phrase is meant to counter. I understand your frustration with idiots who view any one rule as some sort of golden rule handed down from on high, but... well, "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater."

Footprints of old systems

[T.E.D.]

I've found that sometimes old systems leave footprints that last far beyond the computers themselves.

For example, a couple of years ago we had this working networked system that we wanted to upgrade one computer of. The issue was that the protocol used to talk between the systems was a custom network layer written on top of a serial protocol called DR-11W. The cards were rather hard to find, the hardware very finicky to get talking right, and finding good docs for our custom layer was a real challenge.

I eventually found out in researching it that DR-11W was in fact the serial printer port on the original PDP-11's back in the 70's. Neither machine was a PDP-11, but since every upgrade ever done was one computer at a time, we've had to maintain this PDP-11 printer port communications interface for the last 40 years. The protocol even required converting all floating-point values to IBM's old format even though neither side used that format! The conversion's not trivial either.

Our one vendor for these cards has since gone out of business. The story I heard is that they lost their building lease, and didn't feel like it was worth it to move. So it looks like next upgrade, the PDP-11 printer port networking may finally die.

The moral here is that just because the 40-year-old computer may be physically gone, it might not really be gone.

You would (or wouldn't) be surprised...

[mrbill]

I used to run a pair hobbyist/enthusiast sites for fans of DEC's VAX and PDP-11 series of machines.

Shortly after 9/11, I got a phone call from someone at the Pentagon who was looking for certain parts so they could repair an older VAX that had been damaged in the attack. I was able to get them in touch with a third-party reseller who still had those bits in the back of a dusty warehouse.

It was surprising that they hadn't upgraded to Alpha (which had been out almost ten years) then; the telco where I worked had one big system that had gone through three company changes (DEC -> Compaq -> HP) and had been upgraded in-chassis from VAX to Alpha.

I think all large systems sold to the federal government are required to have service/support available for something like 5 to 10 years after final sale availability; can't find concrete details via Google.

Not too surprising...

[klubar]

There are lots of systems that were designed around embedded PDP-8s and PDP-11s. And given the numbers of Digital VAX sold and specialized software it would not be very surprising if some of these systems are still be used. There were probably over 1.5 million of these machines sold (about 300,000 PDP-8s, 700,000 PDP-11s, 500,000 VAX machines), so there's probably some happily humming away.

I'm sure the same is true for some earlier IBM 360/370, but they had a better upgrade path and were more expensive to start with. Most of those machines got replaced when they came off lease or the parts availability expired. But probably some of the software from the early 360's is still be used.

Those were the days when machines were rock solid (and weighed about as much). Unlike today, when electronics are designed to be replaced every two years or so.