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Post by bracknellboy on Mar 30, 2016 20:14:19 GMT
Ah, that's reliable, well written code for you! Robust code that's well maintained for current use cases is a beautiful thing. Dear God... Now ask them about finding spare parts... That of course is a very good point. I doubt that there are any VAX's left running - are there ? Surely not ? So they must have found the source code.....or a clever capability to reverse engineer and port.... Thankfully I don't bank with Barclays.....but guess what, ALL the banks have had similar scenarios. So Ive been told. It is of course just unsubstantiated rumour, not claimed as fact.
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investibod
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Post by investibod on Mar 31, 2016 8:11:46 GMT
That of course is a very good point. I doubt that there are any VAX's left running - are there ? Surely not ? So they must have found the source code.....or a clever capability to reverse engineer and port.... Thankfully I don't bank with Barclays.....but guess what, ALL the banks have had similar scenarios. So Ive been told. It is of course just unsubstantiated rumour, not claimed as fact. I am not too sure about there not being any VAXs still running. Way back when DEC had officially stopped making PDP-11s for some years, I discovered that they were still being supplied (in quantity) for specialist applications. Most hospital X-ray machines at the time had a PDP-11 at the core. This included new ones being installed. I do not know if this is still the case. I cannot personally vouch for this, but I was told that out nuclear submarine fleet was also a customer. Most VAX code would also run on the DEC Alphas (Remember them? A demonstration how close Windows NT was to VMS that the same machine would run either.) I would expect that there is probably a few of those still running somewhere.
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happy
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Post by happy on Mar 31, 2016 10:07:22 GMT
That of course is a very good point. I doubt that there are any VAX's left running - are there ? Surely not ? So they must have found the source code.....or a clever capability to reverse engineer and port.... Thankfully I don't bank with Barclays.....but guess what, ALL the banks have had similar scenarios. So Ive been told. It is of course just unsubstantiated rumour, not claimed as fact. I am not too sure about there not being any VAXs still running. Way back when DEC had officially stopped making PDP-11s for some years, I discovered that they were still being supplied (in quantity) for specialist applications. Most hospital X-ray machines at the time had a PDP-11 at the core. This included new ones being installed. I do not know if this is still the case. I cannot personally vouch for this, but I was told that out nuclear submarine fleet was also a customer. Most VAX code would also run on the DEC Alphas (Remember them? A demonstration how close Windows NT was to VMS that the same machine would run either.) I would expect that there is probably a few of those still running somewhere. Fortunately we have "Year 2000" to thank for all banking organisations legally having to validate every piece of code in their infrastructure for Y2K compliance and this forced a lot of 'reverse engineering' of those little "source code free" boxes in the corner that nobody dared to turn off.
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Mar 31, 2016 10:07:39 GMT
You can get spare parts for anything if you pay enough (and banks have that facility .. as do the military). I once watched with awe as a 20 year obsolete semiconductor fabrication line was re-created and restarted to make a few thousand parts for and application nobody could talk about. I mean they are just rebuilding (IIRC) Atlas/Titan type discrete transistor machine(s?), as seen at the University of the Fens 50 years ago (although I think the Mercury Delay Line storage got nixxed on H&S grounds).
VAX? .. pah, how many would you like on a PCB? Reel to Reel tape .. I am sure we can bodge something with a USB stick the looks and feels like reel to reel (My Davis weather station goes to great lengths to emulate 19.2 kbaud over USB!).
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