'The People Stuck Using Ancient Windows Computers' (bbc.com)
- Reference: 0177625197
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/05/18/2059226/the-people-stuck-using-ancient-windows-computers
- Source link: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250516-the-people-stuck-using-ancient-windows-computers
> Even if you're a diehard Apple user, you're probably interacting with Windows systems on a regular basis. When you're pulling cash out, for example, chances are you're using a computer that's downright geriatric by technology standards. (Microsoft declined to comment for this article.) "Many ATMs still operate on legacy Windows systems, including Windows XP and even Windows NT," which launched in 1993, says Elvis Montiero, an ATM field technician based in Newark, New Jersey in the US. "The challenge with upgrading these machines lies in the high costs associated with hardware compatibility, regulatory compliance and the need to rewrite proprietary ATM software," he says. Microsoft ended official support for Windows XP in 2014, but Montiero says many ATMs still rely on these primordial systems thanks to their reliability, stability and integration with banking infrastructure.
And a job listing for an IT systems administrator for Germany's railway service "were expected to have expertise with Windows 3.11 and MS-DOS — systems released [2]32 and [3]44 years ago , respectively. In certain parts of Germany, commuting depends on operating systems that are older than many passengers."
> It's not just German transit, either. The trains in San Francisco's [4]Muni Metro light railway , for example, won't start up in the morning until someone [5]sticks a floppy disk into the computer that loads DOS software on the railway's Automatic Train Control System (ATCS). Last year, the San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority (SFMTA) announced its [6]plans to retire this system over the coming decade, but today the floppy disks live on.
Apple is "really aggressive about deprecating old products," M. Scott Ford, a software developer who specialises in updating legacy systems, tells the BBC. "But Microsoft took the approach of letting organisations leverage the hardware they already have and chasing them for software licenses instead. They also tend to have a really long window for supporting that software."
And so you get things like two enormous LightJet printers in San Diego powered by servers running Windows 2000, says photographic printer [7]John Watts :
> Long out of production, the few remaining LightJets rely on the Windows operating systems that were around when these printers were sold. "A while back we looked into upgrading one of the computers to Windows Vista. By the time we added up the money it would take to buy new licenses for all the software it was going to cost $50,000 or $60,000 [£38,000 to £45,000]," Watts says. "I can't stand Windows machines," he says, "but I'm stuck with them...."
>
> In some cases, however, old computers are a labour of love. In the US, Dene Grigar, director of the [8]Electronic Literature Lab at Washington State University, Vancouver, spends her days in a room full of vintage (and fully functional) computers dating back to 1977... She's not just interested in [9]early , [10]experimental e-books . Her laboratory collects everything from [11]video games to [12]Instagram zines .... Grigar's Electronic Literature Lab maintains 61 computers to showcase the hundreds of electronic works and thousands of files in the collection, which she keeps in pristine condition.
Grigar says they're still looking for a PC that reads five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250516-the-people-stuck-using-ancient-windows-computers
[2] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/05/biztech/articles/21microsoft-add.html
[3] https://www.popsci.com/technology/ms-dos-archive-discovery/
[4] https://www.sfmta.com/projects/train-control-upgrade-project
[5] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240510-floppy-disks-why-some-people-are-still-in-love-with-this-obsolete-computer-storage-technology
[6] https://sfist.com/2024/08/07/muni-to-update-train-control-system-from-floppy-disk-era-over-the-next-ten-years/
[7] https://wattsdigital.com/about-john-watts
[8] https://dtc-wsuv.org/electronic-literature-lab/
[9] https://dtc-wsuv.org/projects/victory-garden/index.html
[10] https://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/pmaf/hypertext/aft/
[11] https://dtc-wsuv.org/projects/amnesia/
[12] https://the-next.eliterature.org/exhibition/filter/
lab equipment (Score:2)
I work in a test lab. We have a number of pieces of old test equipment, that we use but not often and it does not make sense to replace, that run on XP. I think we finally eliminated the Windows 2000 ones. The manufacturers have no interest in writing new drivers or software, they want to sell you a new one. So, we keep them off the network and eBay spare parts ahead of time.
Reason: closed source is expensive (Score:2)
> "Many ATMs still operate on legacy Windows systems, including Windows XP and even Windows NT," which launched in 1993, says Elvis Montiero, an ATM field technician based in Newark, New Jersey in the US. "The challenge with upgrading these machines lies in the high costs associated with hardware compatibility, regulatory compliance and the need to rewrite proprietary ATM software, " he says.
> Long out of production, the few remaining LightJets rely on the Windows operating systems that were around when these printers were sold. "A while back we looked into upgrading one of the computers to Windows Vista. By the time we added up the money it would take to buy new licenses for all the software it was going to cost $50,000 or $60,000 [£38,000 to £45,000]," Watts says. "I can't stand Windows machines," he says, "but I'm stuck with them."
Behold, the true costs of closed source software.
Makes me feel better about my contribution (Score:1)
to my organization's technical debt.
VxWorks 5.something (vintage late 90s?) on a PPC single board computer on a VMEbus (late 80s?)...in the early 2010s and still chunkin' away...
This is (Score:2)
Just the cost of not maintaining your own infrastructure with incremental upgrades as various pieces become obsolete. No one (or business) is "stuck" using old hardware. They backed themselves into a corner and then complain about it as if they didn't do it to themselves.
I was told not upgrading was a security risk (Score:1)
how is banking reliant on abandonware then?
Re: (Score:2)
They are taking a calculated risk. One can debate the wisdom of that choice, but I personally would be more worried about touchless card readers, which are mostly the recent retrofits, than about modems, similar outbound-only connections, or their old OSes. The usage model of an ATM is very different from a personal computer, and the threat surface is correspondingly different.
Notes (Score:2)
1. The people in question are not stuck. They live happily.
2. Those systems work like clockwork. They don't usually need replacing.
Floppy emulators (Score:2)
> The trains in San Francisco's Muni Metro light railway, for example, won't start up in the morning until someone sticks a floppy disk into the computer that loads DOS software on the railway's Automatic Train Control System (ATCS).
I bet they could replace that with a floppy emulator, that'd load disk images from a flash drive instead.
Prism Newspaper Labeler (Score:1)
We have an old Newspaper Laber called Prism. REQUIRES Windows XP SP2 due to 3 very old Propriety SCSI, and Serial cards to make it work. I'm looking for motherboards to replace the one we have before it dies. New hardware is upwards of $500,000 USD to replace it. Needs to have 3 PCI (1) slots. We can't get drivers for them either. Nobody makes them and the Manufacturer removed them.
I keep old hardware around to read old files. Have an old laptop that rents out for $500/day to local operations for th
Sample size for Apple is much smaller (Score:2)
Is Apple hardware or software used much to run other equipment compared to Windows and *ix? It is probably a tiny fraction. It is much easier for Apple to deprecate their systems when the majority of their systems are used as desktop computers. Sure maybe there is some occasional older software with compatibility issues but the domain of issues is much smaller since they are pretty much only in the desktop space.
Seems typical (Score:2)
When a public service splashes out on something that works, or at least they can tolerate, they're loathe to spend any more money on it. I bet these ticker boards just work so they'll bodge whatever is needed to squeeze a few more years out of them.
It's inevitable but not until it actually happens (Score:1)
I bet every single one of these companies will magically find a way WHEN what they're currently relying on dies. WHEN, people. It's going to happen but you know what? It's economically valid. It's not necessary until it's necessary and then it goes under the emergency category where you have a lot of leeway. How do you categorize modernizing things now when it costs so much when it's not technically necessary?
Wait, what? (Score:2)
This bit in the article about printers that use Win2k jumped out at me: "A while back we looked into upgrading one of the computers to Windows Vista."
Why would you do that? And not just in a picking-on-Vista-for-sucking way, in general: Win2k is very out of support, Vista is very out of support; so either way you are going to need to have the whole setup dedicated to keeping those systems away from potential trouble. There are some incremental improvements(vista would mean being able to ditch SMBv1 and p
Paging Adrian Black (Score:2)
Grigar doesn't know about him?
Adrian's digital Workshop?
[1]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yXPpLLYMRqI&pp=ygUdQWRyaWFucyBkaWdpdGFsIHdvcmtzaG9wIDUxNTA%3D