On 06/05/2010 01:15 PM, The Daring Dufas wrote:
On 6/5/2010 3:37 AM, aemeijers wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
(snip)
I have a lot of older computer gear that I hang on to because, believe
it or not, I have some customers who are still running DOS and certain
software simply because it works. The newfangled super fast motherboards
and CPU's are not compatible. People think I'm crazy for rescuing old
computers from the trash heap.
TDD
Oh, I believe it. I keep an old slow Dell laptop chained under my desk
at work, that boots up in dos 6.22, and still has a 9-pin serial port.
The software I use to program the decade-old walkie-talkies that our
contractor staff uses, will not run under windows (even in a dos box),
or on a USB to serial adapter for the PC to radio interface box. They
used to try to keep replacing it on me, but I think it finally fell off
the inventory records. As long as we use those vintage radios (Motorola
HT1000), I need that relic of a PC, even if it only gets booted up 2-3
times a year. Those Motorolas are not dying anytime soon- these are from
before M. off-shored all their production, and are built to mil-spec
standards for outside use. Living inside an office building all day is
easy duty for them. I'll be retired before those radios are. (The kid
contractors keep asking for PTT cell phones to replace them, and I keep
telling them Not On My Watch- we OWN the radios and the repeater on the
roof, and I'm not gonna ask the taxpayers to start paying $40? a month
per user, for something that doesn't work as well. We have about 100 of
the radios, so it would be a hell of a cell phone bill.)
I have a Dell C600 laptop that has a serial port and I use it to program
anything with a serial interface because some equipment will only work
with a (true) serial port. Those HT1000 radios are newer than the radios
I took care of for the contractor I worked for at the Kwajalein Missile
Range back in the late 80's. Those units were just as tough and were
also software programmable. Do you remember the old Motorola "brick"
cellphones? Those things were built like tanks too and you could run
over one of them with a truck and not break it.
TDD
I used to have some computers like that at my last job. Hopefully the
people still there recognized their necessity for maintaining vintage
systems and did not ****can them.
nate
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