People are upset because their hardware is still working??
Is it better if it just stopped working one day?
For the people who use this old technology, life can get tedious. For four years, psychiatrist Eric Zabriskie would show up to his job at the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and start the day waiting for a computer to boot up. "I had to get to the clinic early because sometimes it would take 15 minutes just to log into the computer," Zabriskie says. "Once you're in you try to never log out. I'd hold on for dear life. It was excruciatingly slow."
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Most VA medical facilities manage health records using a suite of tools launched by the US government in 1997 called the Computerized Patient Record System (CPRS). But it works on top of an even older system called VistA – not to be confused with the Windows Vista operating system – which first debuted in 1985 and was originally built on the operating system MS-DOS.
The VA is now on its fourth attempt to overhaul this system after a series of fits and starts that dates back almost 25 years. The current plan is to replace it with a health record system used by the US Department of Defense by 2031. "VA remains steadfast in its commitment to implementing a modernised, interoperable Federal [electronic health record] system to improve health care delivery and positively impact patient care," says VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz. He says the system is already live at six VA sites and will be deployed at 19 out of 170 facilities by 2026.
I'd like to think that Linux as a platform for running such systems would have gotten a mention but it seems that BBC is unaware it exists.
I wonder if at some point virtualizing, and potentially adding a modern control layer on top of their current machines is a potential path forward.
The reality is that you need to keep upgrading and building new infrastructure. Because inevitably the old one won’t work or no longer be enough to support the needs of the users. And when that happens, it will be even more painful and expensive to get it up and running again. And the best case scenario would be that no one loses their lives over it.
see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30505421
The article does not mention what OS is being used, but RT-11 was designed for "real-time" applications. That was released in 1973, so over 50 years ago.
> The only thing missing from Grigar's collection is a PC that reads five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks, she says. Despite their ubiquity, the machines are surprisingly hard to find. "I look on eBay, Craigslist, I have friends out looking for me, nothing. I've been looking for six years," she says. If you have one of these old computers lying around, and it still works, Grigar would love to hear from you.
We ended up creating a disk image then emulating the machine in Hyper-V and passing through 2 usb-based serial ports. Works like a charm!
I was happy with Windows XP, Windows vista, 7,8,8.1,10, and 11 added nothing to my quality of life that I can think of?
ProllyInfamous•1h ago
Still in love with my Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) tax machine (offline).
I keep another machine of the same era (Intel Core2Duo) online with Win7Pro, for official paperwork/logins. Doesn't seem to be hacked / compromised, yet (what people usually say).
Also rocking modern Apple Silicon (M2Pro/3/4) which is impressive equipment, particularly considering their miniscule power usage. The current 15" MacBookAir will stream video for the majority of a day on a single charge, and from CostCo can be occassionally purchased for $849 (which includes an additional year of warranty).