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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday January 08 2017, @10:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the imagine-a-beowulf-cluster dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 2) by theluggage on Sunday January 08 2017, @03:09PM

    by theluggage (1797) on Sunday January 08 2017, @03:09PM (#451036)

    Well, I hear that Pioneer 10 had a plaque with pictures of naked people on it!!! - you might be able to get funding to go and sort that out (tell the conservatives that you're going to paint on some underwear, and the liberals that you're going to add an intersex, non-caucasian figure and you should get two bites at the cherry...)

    Voyager just had that rather embarrassing record... someone should probably replace it with a properly DRM'd digital recording, although since vinyl seems to be coming back, you may have missed that window of opportunity.

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  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday January 08 2017, @04:01PM

    by butthurt (6141) on Sunday January 08 2017, @04:01PM (#451053) Journal

    There were two of those disgusting plaques; the other was affixed to Pioneer 11.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque [wikipedia.org]

  • (Score: 2, Funny) by slap on Sunday January 08 2017, @06:22PM

    by slap (5764) on Sunday January 08 2017, @06:22PM (#451116)

    I always thought that the drawings of naked humans on the spacecraft was a bad idea. Some aliens may think it is some kind of a restaurant menu......

    • (Score: 2) by theluggage on Sunday January 08 2017, @06:29PM

      by theluggage (1797) on Sunday January 08 2017, @06:29PM (#451119)

      ...warning, may contain nuts.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 08 2017, @08:47PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 08 2017, @08:47PM (#451176)

        How about the human on the right? That's not got much nut in it.