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Shadow of the Horned Rat on PC, however old that is...

I work at a major UK university in a science department and we have multiple PCs running Windows 3.11 because they're running some ancient piece of software, written by an academic who may very well now be dead, often connected to an instrument via some esoteric comms card. In some cases entire research projects can rely on this software.

Personally, I still have a whole host of old RPGs from the early 90s. The oldest one I still actually play form time to time is The Summoning, from 1991.

Slipspace wrote:
I work at a major UK university in a science department and we have multiple PCs running Windows 3.11 because they're running some ancient piece of software, written by an academic who may very well now be dead, often connected to an instrument via some esoteric comms card. In some cases entire research projects can rely on this software.

That sounds completely normal to me We have a piece of software that no one knows exactly how it works, but everyone uses it, written by someone who doesn't work with us any more. I wrote my own version of the same software by trawling through text books and research publications to get an algorithm, but it doesn't run as well as the existing one.

Luckily it was written in a common language to be run in linux command line, so we aren't locked into some ancient operating system to keep it working.

 Momotaro wrote:
Come and work in the NHS or British local government! My clients have so much 20, 30, 40 year old software.

The typical system I replace is 10-20 years old. It's out of support, and anybody who fully understood it on either the supplier or customer side left a decade ago. There's a cloud of supporting software glommed onto it to make it work with more modern hardware

Often, it was modified from a data schema from an older system, often through several generations, so internal codes have to go through several layers of translation to match up with modern statutory coding. Working processes may be based on who had which office in 1977.

I was replacing systems on flat-file databases from the late 70s/early 80s until about 5 years ago. Systems that ran entire groups of hospitals...

There are four main reasons this is so.

1. Reluctance of management to make any decision that might look bad on them. Choosing new hardware and software can go wrong, why risk taking the blame, kick the can down the road.

2. Entrenchment of workers with very niche skillsets, many of which get laid off by the above managers looking for easy changes then come back as consultants charging far more money.

3. The UK had a few forward thinking officials in the 70's and 80's who modernised and did it well.

and most importantly

4. Many older systems can't be hacked.



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We all use some core component software going back to the 8086 chip, including bug for bug compatibility. But it is so back end I wonder if it counts.

The oldest software I knowingly use is this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_Aragon



Tactical and strategic wargames form 1989.

I may have some abandonware which is older, but never used.

 Orlanth wrote:
and most importantly

4. Many older systems can't be hacked.

Older systems were easy to hack. I hate to think that somewhere in the UK there may still be software reliant on 'RM Networks Security' for 3.11 or similar.

But nobody is writing tools and scripts for old operating systems any more (let alone bespoke software from the 70s). Some protection through obsolescence.

A.T. wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
and most importantly

4. Many older systems can't be hacked.

Older systems were easy to hack. I hate to think that somewhere in the UK there may still be software reliant on 'RM Networks Security' for 3.11 or similar.

But nobody is writing tools and scripts for old operating systems any more (let alone bespoke software from the 70s). Some protection through obsolescence.

I didnt mean old as in 90's Windows. I am talking about computers made in the 70's.

I know for a flat fact that the computers in some nuclear power stations made in the 70's and 80's were purposely not upgraded because they run on non standard OS.


That being said, I know someone who knows his way around computers quite a bit and refused to update past Windows 7 and heard of many more, some extreme cases using DOS.

Government computers using Win 3.11 is something I can believe, inertia is a thing and the civil service can be very backward. There was a fairly recent case in the news of hospital database computers running Windows 2000 being hacked, they over-relied on obsolescence but didn't remove themselves from the loop completely. Microsoft actually made a patch for the particular threat even though this software was long retired because targeting hospitals pisses off just about anyone.

A lot of those older systems were flavours of Unix. Up until Solaris 2.8 or 2.9 (Early 2000s) Sun Microsystems was shipping out operating systems that were completely open by default. Nothing encrypted, so all you need to do is sniff an open password on the local network -or internet! - via sendmail or telnet. Older versions of FTP let you traverse the entire filesystem...

I spent a non-trivial amount of time hardening systems - Unix is hardly a niche product. There's a reason why security through "obscurity" is generally discouraged - anything commercial is not obscure. And the recent attacks on log4j - I was coding with that in 2001, and the flaw was only found this year. Although yeah, I can see that some places have utterly unique OSes and software.

It all comes down to a mix of factors, but money and bad management are top of the list. In terms of digital maturity models, many public sector places still score a 1 - "we has a computerz".

It's what I'm working on these days - making sure that from the day you decide to buy a new system, that security patching, upgrades, end-of-life are all planned for.

Big public sector organisations are honeypots for social engineering too. Everyone - bailiffs, your angry ex, your dealer - knows we have your phone number and address.

I know this guy who works in pen testing and other related topics. He did an assessment on a a branch of the emergency services for a major city.
Their IT department was fairly clued up and had at least one competent in it, and had upgraded to a two stage security system. The donkey-in-chief however was a tad lazy and linked both stages together, used the same password and left it lying around so he wouldn't forget. The security for the entire orgnisation was reduced to the lowest single denominator.
One kick up backside, carefully aimed, later and the issue was gone. But some people you can't teach and can't sack.

Oh yeah - the IT people know what they need to do.

Daggerfall and MechWarrior 2

ACDSee 3.1 image browser, it's lightning fast and has zero bloat, the installer is under 6 megabytes.

Another few reasons businesses and groups end up with old software

1) Active workplace. They are running software that's running all the time and they don't want to interrupt it for an upgrade that could take days to weeks to months to sort out.

2) Cost - don't forget its not just the cost of new equipment; its the cost of downtime when you're transferring over; the cost of specialists to keep it up to date and the cost of retraining staff. Keeping in mind some of those staff won't be computer literate. They know how to use software X that hasn't changed in 20 years. Give them new software and you're basically back to day 1 of "this is a mouse, this is a keyboard".

3) Budget allocation. The good old "X works, we don't need to replace X because it will cost so we can put the budget into Y because Y isn't working". Or returns greater investment money or whatever. Basically the computing budget for the upgrade keeps getting passed over - esp as it likely gets more expensive every few years (you go from upgrading the old software to new to needing to upgrade the old software and hardware to needing to replace the infrastructure and train new staff etc...).







As for my oldest software, its probably Warcraft 2; though its now the GOG edition so not sure if that really counts as "old".

Maybe blender 3d.

Gonna go with DoS/Command Prompt. But that's because I help teach cyber security/network plus

I still play Warlords Battlecry 3 sometimes, its the oldest thing I knowingly use.

At work, we're still on Lotus Notes, and we had some web-based apps that required us to keep IE11 hanging around because they wouldn't work on anything newer, but the compatibility mode in Edge seems to have sorted that out now.

Other than that, how old is NOTEPAD.EXE?


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Slipspace wrote:
I work at a major UK university in a science department and we have multiple PCs running Windows 3.11 because they're running some ancient piece of software, written by an academic who may very well now be dead, often connected to an instrument via some esoteric comms card. In some cases entire research projects can rely on this software.

Personally, I still have a whole host of old RPGs from the early 90s. The oldest one I still actually play form time to time is The Summoning, from 1991.

That beats my last job, where the CNC machines were controlled by PCs running Windows 98. We had to get the MD to bring in an old CRT monitor from his attic, because the one on the machine stopped working, and we couldn't get it to recognise an LCD monitor. I managed to get one of them upgraded to Windows XP (that had itself been removed from "active service" somewhere else in the factory), and then had to fettle the startup routine because somehow running using multiple cores stopped the interface to the CNC machine from working.

N64 and PS2 games still get occasional use. Goldeneye and Mario Kart 64 are probably the oldest titles.

I've got one or two PS2s squirreled away in case this one dies, but I should probably pickup another N64 before prices go higher

 Overread wrote:
Another few reasons businesses and groups end up with old software

1) Active workplace. They are running software that's running all the time and they don't want to interrupt it for an upgrade that could take days to weeks to months to sort out.

2) Cost - don't forget its not just the cost of new equipment; its the cost of downtime when you're transferring over; the cost of specialists to keep it up to date and the cost of retraining staff. Keeping in mind some of those staff won't be computer literate. They know how to use software X that hasn't changed in 20 years. Give them new software and you're basically back to day 1 of "this is a mouse, this is a keyboard".

3) Budget allocation. The good old "X works, we don't need to replace X because it will cost so we can put the budget into Y because Y isn't working". Or returns greater investment money or whatever. Basically the computing budget for the upgrade keeps getting passed over - esp as it likely gets more expensive every few years (you go from upgrading the old software to new to needing to upgrade the old software and hardware to needing to replace the infrastructure and train new staff etc...).







As for my oldest software, its probably Warcraft 2; though its now the GOG edition so not sure if that really counts as "old".

Also on workplace stuff?

If it’s linked to manufacturing, you probably don’t want to go mucking about with whatever software drives your machinery, just in case. I mean updates, sure, especially if the machine itself is relatively modern. But if your, I dunno, printing press, is from the late 70’s or early 80’s and has a level of computerisation? You probably don’t need or want to upgrade?

Speaking of which….how are we defining software here? Grandad used to run a print shop in Edinburgh, and I remember the massive guilliotine for chopping up paper. Mum couldn’t use it due to her….well…her bosom, as it would trip the light sensor, which had to be clear or it wouldn’t activate. Being electronic, and presumably having some kind of logic gate for off/on, would that be software, or hardware depending on the design?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Speaking of which….how are we defining software here? Grandad used to run a print shop in Edinburgh, and I remember the massive guilliotine for chopping up paper. Mum couldn’t use it due to her….well…her bosom, as it would trip the light sensor, which had to be clear or it wouldn’t activate. Being electronic, and presumably having some kind of logic gate for off/on, would that be software, or hardware depending on the design?

I'd call that hardware, but I'm not really sure what the definition is, I believe software is something that using programming via a processor. As there's likely no processor controlling it, it's probably just a photo sensor that goes into a normally closed relay so that when the machine is running the relay is open, and when the light beam is broken the relay closes and shuts down the machine.

I dunno how it was back in the day, but at my work a "software safety" whereby a program is used via a processing unit to shut something down if X occurs isn't really considered a safety at all.

Winamp!

It really kicks the llama's ass.