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bthylafh · Mon Oct 16, 2017 8:56 pm

Today I visited a law office here in town. They are fitted with two circa 2003 G4 Power Macs (maximum OS 10.5.8 ) and they have a wall-mounted storage rack filled with 3.5" floppies which appeared to be labeled with people's names. Given that a lawyer is a somewhat high-value target and their data is itself quite valuable*, you might think that they'd keep their stuff a little better secured and backed up. You might think that, or if you've been around long enough you're snickering and nodding along.

What antique IT infra have you seen in the wild that ought to have been retired ages ago, if only for security reasons? How about any data disasters waiting to happen?

* I expect they've got the actual important stuff on paper (the lawyer and his assistant are in their 60s), but still.

whm1974 · Mon Oct 16, 2017 10:16 pm

Could be worse, they could still be using i8080/Z80 systems with 5 1/4" or even 8" floppies running CP/M.

End User · Mon Oct 16, 2017 10:28 pm

A major client of ours shipped us a "new" laptop that allows us to QA our product on their platform. It is running Windows 7 Enterprise. :roll:

ludi · Mon Oct 16, 2017 10:45 pm

End User wrote:
A major client of ours shipped us a "new" laptop that allows us to QA our product on their platform. It is running Windows 7 Enterprise.

Our company has about 700 employees still running Win7 Pro, i.e. pretty much everyone on the engineering floor. IT tried validating a deployable Win10 image earlier this year, and quickly decided they will continue using Win7 for a while yet. Between the five-ish different industries we serve, there is a high six-figure investment in specialty software that is updated by the vendors on schedules known only to the vendors and supernatural entities. Since that library is currently validated and deployed on Win7, that's where it's staying for now.

Usacomp2k3 · Tue Oct 17, 2017 6:43 am

My neighbor writes software for law firms. Their IT can be very behind.

K-L-Waster · Tue Oct 17, 2017 6:52 am

bthylafh wrote:
... and they have a wall-mounted storage rack filled with 3.5" floppies which appeared to be labeled with people's names.

That's probably more secure than it sounds. How many thieves will be able to get their hands on a floppy drive to read the data?

DragonDaddyBear · Tue Oct 17, 2017 7:01 am

You obviously haven't been in the DoD world. I've seen stuff being used for missions from the 80's. Nuclear stuff is even older.

srg86 · Tue Oct 17, 2017 7:21 am

End User wrote:
A major client of ours shipped us a "new" laptop that allows us to QA our product on their platform. It is running Windows 7 Enterprise.

Except that Windows 7 is still supported. Not that I have any love for Win 7 (Win 10 works fine for me) but this thread is able obsolete IT. :roll:

Tue Oct 17, 2017 7:24 am

DragonDaddyBear wrote:
You obviously haven't been in the DoD world. I've seen stuff being used for missions from the 80's. Nuclear stuff is even older.

Yup, if you wanna see some really old tech go work in the defense sector. Yes, they get the latest toys too; but once something works they tend to stick with it forever. The avionics on a lot of military aircraft still use a serial communications architecture developed in the early 1970s (MIL-STD-1553), which runs at 1 mbit/sec over a redundant shared bus.

It was a pretty big deal when they started retrofitting Ethernet into some of the older platforms (just within the past decade or so). A lot of things get easier (or become possible) when you increase the available bandwidth by 3 orders of magnitude! :lol:

trackerben · Tue Oct 17, 2017 7:27 am

DragonDaddyBear wrote:
You obviously haven't been in the DoD world. I've seen stuff being used for missions from the 80's. Nuclear stuff is even older.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEh1fLXpKqo

SuperSpy · Tue Oct 17, 2017 7:34 am

just brew it! wrote:
DragonDaddyBear wrote:
You obviously haven't been in the DoD world. I've seen stuff being used for missions from the 80's. Nuclear stuff is even older.

Yup, if you wanna see some really old tech go work in the defense sector. Yes, they get the latest toys too; but once something works they tend to stick with it forever. The avionics on a lot of military aircraft still use a serial communications architecture developed in the early 1970s (MIL-STD-1553), which runs at 1 mbit/sec over a redundant shared bus.

It was a pretty big deal when they started retrofitting Ethernet into some of the older platforms (just within the past decade or so). A lot of things get easier (or become possible) when you increase the available bandwidth by 3 orders of magnitude!

That's assuming they didn't replace it with 10Mbit half duplex and hubs.

Tue Oct 17, 2017 7:54 am

SuperSpy wrote:
That's assuming they didn't replace it with 10Mbit half duplex and hubs.

It was 100/1000 with a switch, at least on the project I was involved with. I assume hubs would've been a no-go due to the unpredictable latency you get with collisions.

Can't use RJ-45 connectors in a rugged environment though, for obvious reasons. The connectors were similar to these: http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Amp ... fuEALw_wcB

Chrispy_ · Tue Oct 17, 2017 8:39 am

So many lecture theatres, auditoriums, conference suites and other meeting spaces still provide a D-SUB VGA cable to an 800x600 or 1024x768 projector.

It's quite embarassingly awful and most of our mobile kit is modern and slim, so there's no room for a chunky old VGA connector. Our guys frequently take their own compact 1080p projector, if only because our architectural content looks like ass if it's not at the right aspect ratio, and 800x450 letterboxed CAD drawings (thin, monochrome lines) don't really work in any meaningful way.

End User · Tue Oct 17, 2017 9:45 am

srg86 wrote:
End User wrote:
A major client of ours shipped us a "new" laptop that allows us to QA our product on their platform. It is running Windows 7 Enterprise.

Except that Windows 7 is still supported. Not that I have any love for Win 7 (Win 10 works fine for me) but this thread is able obsolete IT.

Windows 7 is ...

Obsolete Synonyms
antiquated, archaic, dated, démodé, demoded, fossilized, kaput (also kaputt), medieval (also mediaeval), moribund, mossy, moth-eaten, neolithic, Noachian, outdated, outmoded, out-of-date, outworn, passé, prehistoric (also prehistorical), rusty, Stone Age, superannuated

Related Words
aging (or ageing), obsolescent; discarded, disused, inoperable, unusable, unworkable, useless; dead, defunct, expired, extinct, vanished; dormant, fallow, free, idle, inactive, inert, inoperative, latent; ancient, antediluvian, antique, dateless, fusty, musty, old; oldfangled, old-fashioned, old-time, retro, vintage; aged, age-old, hoary, venerable; atavistic, bygone, erstwhile, former, historic, historical, late, old-world, past

Tue Oct 17, 2017 9:49 am

Corporate users typically do not upgrade until official support ends. (And sometimes not even then.)

End User · Tue Oct 17, 2017 9:51 am

just brew it! wrote:
Corporate users typically do not upgrade until official support ends. (And sometimes not even then.)

Does not change a thing. Windows 7 is ancient and as obsolete as the headphone jack or a manual transmission (and I ******* love manual transmissions).

bthylafh · Tue Oct 17, 2017 9:58 am

Let's not feed the troll, folks.

G8torbyte · Tue Oct 17, 2017 10:03 am

just brew it! wrote:
DragonDaddyBear wrote:
You obviously haven't been in the DoD world. I've seen stuff being used for missions from the 80's. Nuclear stuff is even older.

Yup, if you wanna see some really old tech go work in the defense sector. Yes, they get the latest toys too; but once something works they tend to stick with it forever. The avionics on a lot of military aircraft still use a serial communications architecture developed in the early 1970s (MIL-STD-1553), which runs at 1 mbit/sec over a redundant shared bus.

Yep, DoD is slow to upgrade in some areas if it still works well. The venerable old B52 bombers were still using analog components up until recently. They are all undergiong new avionics upgrades to extend their service past 2040 now. At my military base museum they have a section of the old base telephone switch board with the rotary dials and cable plugs/jacks. It's displayed as a hands-on exhibit and my kids were fascinated with it. The curator said it was in operation up until the mid-90's not surprisingly.

End User · Tue Oct 17, 2017 10:07 am

bthylafh wrote:
Let's not feed the troll, folks.

You label people you disagree with trolls?

Do you encourage people to use an 8 year old OS? Shame on you if you do.

Windows 7 hangers on are one of the major reasons why Microsoft crashed and burned in the mobile space. Just look at the state of the Windows Store today - it is a complete flop - UWP never stood a chance because Windows 7 usage deflated the momentum required to shake off the past. Windows 7 is more than obsolete, it is a anchor dragging down Microsofts future.

Krogoth · Tue Oct 17, 2017 10:15 am

End User wrote:
bthylafh wrote:
Let's not feed the troll, folks.

You label people you disagree with trolls?

Do you encourage people to use an 8 year old OS? Shame on you if you do.

Windows 7 hangers on are one of the major reasons why Microsoft crashed and burned in the mobile space. Just look at the state of the Windows Store today - it is a complete flop - UWP never stood a chance because Windows 7 usage deflated the momentum required to shake off the past. Windows 7 is more than obsolete, it is a anchor dragging down Microsofts future.

Wrong, it is because Google and Apple beat Microsoft to the punch by a couple of years. Microsoft's bread and butter has always been SMB and Enterprise markets. They lost the mainstream market to Apple years ago.

SuperSpy · Tue Oct 17, 2017 10:19 am

SuperSpy · Tue Oct 17, 2017 10:21 am

I always chuckle when I go into a mechanic's shop or a small business and see a text-only screen (or even better yet, one wrapped by a VirtualBox window) and a tractor-feed invoice printer.

Tue Oct 17, 2017 10:22 am

End User wrote:
Windows 7 hangers on are one of the major reasons why Microsoft crashed and burned in the mobile space. Just look at the state of the Windows Store today - it is a complete flop - UWP never stood a chance because Windows 7 usage deflated the momentum required to shake off the past. Windows 7 is more than obsolete, it is a anchor dragging down Microsofts future.

You can't blame Windows 7 users for that. People want to use what works, and what they're accustomed to; Windows 7 was still a perfectly good OS, and Windows 8/8.1 was not a compelling enough improvement. That's all on Microsoft, for not giving people enough of a reason to upgrade.

Upgrading all of the OSes in a corporate IT environment is also extremely costly and disruptive. I can't really blame the IT managers for putting it off as long as possible either.

srg86 · Tue Oct 17, 2017 10:30 am

End User wrote:
srg86 wrote:
End User wrote:
A major client of ours shipped us a "new" laptop that allows us to QA our product on their platform. It is running Windows 7 Enterprise.

Except that Windows 7 is still supported. Not that I have any love for Win 7 (Win 10 works fine for me) but this thread is able obsolete IT.

Windows 7 is ...

Obsolete Synonyms
antiquated, archaic, dated, démodé, demoded, fossilized, kaput (also kaputt), medieval (also mediaeval), moribund, mossy, moth-eaten, neolithic, Noachian, outdated, outmoded, out-of-date, outworn, passé, prehistoric (also prehistorical), rusty, Stone Age, superannuated

Related Words
aging (or ageing), obsolescent; discarded, disused, inoperable, unusable, unworkable, useless; dead, defunct, expired, extinct, vanished; dormant, fallow, free, idle, inactive, inert, inoperative, latent; ancient, antediluvian, antique, dateless, fusty, musty, old; oldfangled, old-fashioned, old-time, retro, vintage; aged, age-old, hoary, venerable; atavistic, bygone, erstwhile, former, historic, historical, late, old-world, past

Except that it's not, not yet anyway. XP yes, 7 no. You have an odd opinion of what is obsolete, or you are just trolling. Obsolete is when it is no longer fit for purpose.

Duncan_H · Tue Oct 17, 2017 10:40 am

We currently use, in our production office, the following:

Win7 32 bit on nearly all company machines (!!)
100Mb core switches
VMWare 5.0
BackupExec 2012
An EqualLogic PS4100 SAN, out of support and EOL.
A 20 year old CRM system that can't handle Euros because they weren't around when it was coded and our boss is too tight to spend money on the upgrade modules.
And finally we have a voicemail PC that, get this, runs XP and is internet facing. Oh, and the firewall has to be turned off because otherwise the support company can't remote in and change stuff.

I think that's it.

Concupiscence · Tue Oct 17, 2017 10:46 am

I always beat this drum because it's always true: lab environments are a source of endless retro tech. A decade ago a firm I worked for had an emission spectrometer that ran all its software from a 5.25" floppy disk. Lots of electron microscopes in the real world rely on controller boards never updated to work past 32-bit Windows XP; while virtualization's probably becoming feasible at this point, in the old days your best bet was to grab up as much XP-compatible hardware as you could lay hands on and swap in parts when old hardware gave out. That doesn't even touch on the fun and magic of *really* old kit, like the ground-penetrating radar setup that ran in MS-DOS at my university, or the endless parade of RS-232 devices operating for the past 30+ years with no end in sight...

ludi · Tue Oct 17, 2017 10:47 am

SuperSpy wrote:
I always chuckle when I go into a mechanic's shop or a small business and see a text-only screen (or even better yet, one wrapped by a VirtualBox window) and a tractor-feed invoice printer.

They still have that at the local Lowe's. On one hand, "if it works..." But on the other hand, a Home Depot cashier can look up inventory on a touchscreen menu by any combination of barcode, printed code, color code, or picture.

just brew it! wrote:
Upgrading all of the OSes in a corporate IT environment is also extremely costly and disruptive. I can't really blame the IT managers for putting it off as long as possible either.

Less costly if you perform a rolling upgrade by deploying the new OS as machines are replaced, but as I noted to EU earlier, our issue is a large investment in specialty software that works on Win7. All of the glitches, work-arounds, support limitations, etc. are known quantities. Deploy on Win10, and we would have to re-build all that institutional knowledge.

Vhalidictes · Tue Oct 17, 2017 11:06 am

End User wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
Corporate users typically do not upgrade until official support ends. (And sometimes not even then.)

Does not change a thing. Windows 7 is ancient and as obsolete as the headphone jack or a manual transmission (and I ******* love manual transmissions).

End User, *we get the point*, but this is about super old technology, not technology that's going to be supported for three more years (Jan 2020).

trackerben · Tue Oct 17, 2017 11:15 am

SuperSpy wrote:
I always chuckle when I go into a mechanic's shop or a small business and see a text-only screen (or even better yet, one wrapped by a VirtualBox window) and a tractor-feed invoice printer.

You'll be surprised at the returns that old but viable control applications can deliver. Those that continue to produce and migrate economically, long after sunken cost and tax considerations are gone, are the golden geese of many asset tracking/accounting operations, especially in internal finance.

Dot-matrix printers were made for history-focused reporting and invoicing. They are particularly good for producing multiform hardcopies wherever regulated POS equipment can be avoided. Besides, none have given me the kind of serial grief that inkjet and other spray printers do.

Mr Bill · Tue Oct 17, 2017 11:50 am

Concupiscence wrote:
I always beat this drum because it's always true: lab environments are a source of endless retro tech. ...

(+infinity) I have one WinNT4 running an ICP-MS, two Win95 for the old GC's, three WinXP for the less than 10 years old stuff, and Win7pro 'to rule them all and in the darkness bind them'.

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