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When Allan Lasser went looking for the oldest computer used by the U.S. government, he found a surprising candidate: the Voyager probes.
When I started this project, I hadn't even considered that the oldest active computer might not even be on Earth. But after my first post, I received a few tips encouraging me to look at the computers onboard Voyager.
Benjamin Levy pointed out how, "the actual computers on board are probably older than [1977] because it takes time to design and build space probes and to certify their computers for their mission," and another tipster sent me a link to a story about the Voyager team needing to hire a new programmer with experience in FORTRAN.
I'll admit I was reluctant to pursue these computers at first, but I soon realized that it was silly to disqualify a government computer from this hunt simply because it's billions of miles away. While the hardware hasn't been upgraded since it left Earth, the software has been upgraded and maintained to meet new mission requirements. We're still in touch with these probes and they're still performing science at the edge of our solar system. Most important, these are government computers and they are both old and active.
How much computer infrastructure of today will be operable, let alone reliable in 40 years?
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Sunday January 08 2017, @10:56AM
It's also not a fair question for another reason: The computers on Voyager were surely built specifically to work reliably after a ling time. I'm pretty sure that shows up in the cost of building this computer. In other words, we could make computers that still work reliably in fourty years, and I guess we actually do; for example I would be surprised if the computer in a modern aircraft had to be replaced every five years. But for everyday computers, they would cost so much more that hardly anyone would buy them, especially given the fact that they likely would be tossed out before that time anyway because they no longer fulfil the requirements of modern software, lack newer hardware interfaces, etc.
Do you know a single piece of modern commodity software that would run on a computer from 1987? Heck, even the Linux kernel would no longer work on the PCs of that time, because the lowest Intel CPU still supported is the 80486, which was released two years later. And Linux is quite exceptional in support of old processors.
What about routers from 1987? Would you put one of them into your network today?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 08 2017, @11:40AM
What about routers from 1987? Would you put one of them into your network today?
Millennial hackers will never hack your IoT if your router was built before the hackers were born. Huh huh huh huh huh huh huh young people are dumb huh huh huh huh.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 08 2017, @11:46AM
Soylent Cunts ............ is old people!
(Score: 4, Informative) by Unixnut on Sunday January 08 2017, @12:14PM
> for example I would be surprised if the computer in a modern aircraft had to be replaced every five years.
They generally are actually, although varies from 5 to 10 years (depends on how much it flies, in what conditions and operator diligence). Most of them are COTS embedded systems rather than anything specially developed from scratch.
Planes like the Airbus have 3 machines working in quorum, so one breaking down does not cause an accident. The computers are "refreshed" every maintenance cycle of the aircraft (on airbus, I think it is max 60,000 flight hours).
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 08 2017, @03:38PM
Would the "analog computers" powered by vacuum tubes found in 1990s MIG aircraft also count if they are still in service?
What is a computer, anyway? My grandmother had a mechanical calculator powered by a rotating motor that she used to calculate sales tax and receipts at her shop... some of those are still around and functioning. Is it any different to compare a modern 10nm process chip to a 1980s 1000nm process chip, than to compare chips to vacuum tubes or mechanical computers?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by butthurt on Sunday January 08 2017, @03:50PM
> [...] modern commodity software that would run on a computer from 1987?
FreeDOS should run on all PC hardware, even the IBM PC-XT and systems with as little as 640k memory.
-- http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Hardware_compatibility [freedos.org]
NetBSD/sun2 is the port of NetBSD to the Sun Microsystems sun2 series of computers, which are based on the Motorola 68010 CPU with a Sun-designed custom MMU. Sun sold these computers as both servers and desktop workstations from the early to mid 1980's.
-- https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/sun2/ [netbsd.org]
Development activity on NetBSD/vax continues at a speed depending of people's spare time. NetBSD runs on most of the common desktop systems and also on some of the more unusual older systems such as the large-scale 11/780 and 8600.
-- https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/vax/ [netbsd.org]
The VAX-11/780 family is Digital's oldest VAX product, it was initially announced in 1977.
-- https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/vax-models/#star [netbsd.org]
NetBSD/i386 requires at least a '486.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 08 2017, @10:38PM
ELKS, the Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset [github.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday January 08 2017, @06:30PM
But for everyday computers, they would cost so much more that hardly anyone would buy them, especially given the fact that they likely would be tossed out before that time anyway because they no longer fulfil the requirements of modern software, lack newer hardware interfaces, etc.
While I agree with you that 40 years is an awfully long time in electronics, I think there is also an argument to be made from the opposing side, i.e., that most consumer computers today are built on the principle that they are EXPECTED to fail or become unusable in a few years, necessitating another purchase. Also, the continuous war in increasing specs isn't exactly necessary to handle 97% of what most people do with their computers. Gamers want faster computers, sure -- along with people who do a lot of video or intense graphics work and editing, etc.
But look at what average folks do -- they don't play processor or memory intensive games: they get addicted to Candy Crush or Words With Friends or whatever the most recent BS is. Most don't do video editing on any scale (except if what you mean by "video editing" is creating a video file of their family slideshow animated with Ken Burns Effect). They check Facebook and email. They use word processors and spreadsheets at work. About the only hardware-intensive task they do on a regular basis is probably watching some videos, but a much weaker "computer" in the form of a phone or tablet is even up to those tasks today.
And keep in mind that a lot of actual computers (not "mobile devices") are sold today for work, primarily. Does office software REALLY need that much power? We've just accepted the bloat and the eye candy and whatever, but really -- has office software in terms of core functionality actually improved that much in the past 20 (maybe even 25) years? If not, why exactly does MS Office require something like 100-1000 times the system requirements of that era?
Of course the greatest change since 25 years ago in computing is probably the use of the web. But aside from when people are looking at DEDICATED video or image sites, they're often reading text primarily. Text that probably occupies less than 1% of the resources necessary to download and render the website. (A huge problem here, of course, is the deployment of ads.)
Anyhow, my point here is that the typical computer "lifespan" today isn't just driven by concerns about hardware expense or requirements of "modern software." It's also driven by the fact that computer manufacturers are happy to sell you another computer in 2-3 years, software manufacturers are happy to force you to buy an upgrade (which may not run so well on an older system, even if core functionality hasn't changed much), etc. If we didn't have those driving forces, the desirable computer lifespan for consumers might not be 40 years, but it might be well over 10 years. Unfortunately, there is little reason to force the kind of optimization that designers and programmers used to deal with decades ago. If you know that most people have computers 1000 times more powerful than what they were in 1995, why try to optimize common software like Office so it could still run on such a system?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday January 08 2017, @07:54PM
It is also not a fair question for yet another reason:
Microsoft cannot put its paws on it.
Just a mere disinterested look by Microsoft on a system renders it obsolete/buggy/borked, and if they put some effort they obliterate entire corporations. Remember nokia? Do you think the devil could have put systemd in linux systems through that clearly daemonic Poettering guy and the clearly satanic red hat, without the prior approval of Bill Gates? Do you think android phones pay Microsoft for each produced unit because of undisclosed patents or as a price to pay to keep them the fuck out?
I even feel guilty for having mentioned it, because the mere act puts v'ger in some danger.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday January 09 2017, @04:09AM
While your point is well taken, I feel something is "off" about it.
I think it is laying everything at Microsoft's feet. I suspect that Redhat borked Gnu/Linux without Microsoft's explicit help.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday January 11 2017, @12:23AM
Fair objection, but to interpret my thought consider that my AI models found Gates functionally equivalent to satan.
Account abandoned.