Slightly OT - the pain of obsolesence

Looking at what our UK friend is dealing with regarding his Taylor software got me to thinking about an old news story I heard - a professor at a major university had been working for many, many years on a particular piece of fortran code when his computer crashed, dead, kaput. He then went to request a new computer with one specfication - a 10" floppy drive.

Of course, he learned there is no longer any such animal, they are extinct, essentially and practically. The lady being interviewed related that the man actually cried. His life's work might have been reassembled with a fortran program on a newer computer, but since he never upgraded the media, it was impossible to get it off his disks! He was left with nothing but notes, a new computer, and starting over from zero.

Anyone else know any stories of painful forced obselesence and it's grievous consequences?

TM

See the thread about RoHS

Many IC chips that are old designs will no longer be manufactured because it cost too much to upgrade the process that makes the chips. When chips are no longer available the designers must redesign their circuit boards. They may even have to get the boards recertified UL CE etc.

This will cost a lot of money.

I personally can not believe the story to be true. It is true that technology changes and some items become obsolete but in most cases there are viable options where data on any media is stored.

I can think of at least 2 methods that may have offered a solution:
1. The old drive may have still worked and it could be possible to connect it to the new computer.
2. Just about any data recovery company, technically most college computer departments too, can recover data from any media and transfer it to another form.

I believe the essence of the story, but I also believe it to be embellished as presented.

Perhpas the professor had some fortrash code that he used and tweaked over the years, but it was not his life's work. More likely, it was more trouble/cost to recover the data from the 10" disks than it was to recreate the code, and while this could have been a substantial amount of work, it was by no means a life times worth of work. The 10" drives I used to used back in college held 80Kb.

Nevertheless, it does illustrate the pain of obsolesence.

Try finding memory chips for a 486 PC.

Don't you guys mean 8 inch floppies?

I have a Valid legal copy of DirectSoft Release 2.0b.
It is very old, and it is on two floppies. (actually 4, I have to install 2.0 first)
I use it to work on one 430 that we have in the plant.

I updated my desktop PC recently without a floppy drive, and I want to install the Directsoft on this PC as well as the Laptop.

I was thinking about upgrading the software in order to get a new version on CD.
I think that it would cost me about 500 bucks!
I guess I'll install that Floppy drive now.

If you are on a network you could find a PC that has a floppy and copy all the files from it to a network folder than install it from there. If neither have a floppy then you could purchase a USB floppy drive and use with either.

Alaric

Try finding memory chips for a 486 PC.

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LOL, how much you want? I am a pack rat and have alot of old memory chips. Years ago I bought old computers and upgraded and resold them. In one situation there was a specific card that IBM used, would have to look up the card, but it became obsolete and MANY companies still wanted them. At one point I was getting $250 a piece for them.

Greetings all!


As regards the story, I heard it a few years ago, and cannot verify it's veracity, beyond my recalling that the source was reputable, so I took it at face value.

I do seem to recall this professor was an eccentric who worked on a fossilized old computer - I want to say Wang, but am probably wrong - and so never got onto the network. Maybe he thought someone would steal his stuff.

10",8" - before my time. I saw some once when I was 23, but never measured them. It was for a Fairchild bed'o'nails circuit board tester, running R-Dos, with a hard drive the size of a 33 rpm record album - with 10 meg capacity. There was a box with 20 disks in it that contained the backup of the machine code. This was 12 years ago, and they were debating about upgrading them.

Personally, I got my start with a Tandy Color Computer 2, then upgraded to a Color Computer 3. I graduated to Commodore 128 right before ITT, and got my first home PC after being married a year. Yeh, I was poor...

Who am I kidding? I'm still poor! Tampa sucks... I bought my first house in Indiana (2 stories, finished basement) for $42k. Here, $150K won't get you a hovel in a bad part of town...


TM

Tim, I can understand the costs in Tampa....I moved here from Orlando in '03, at the same rate of pay. However, with the cost of living issue, it was like an $8 an hour raise!

stasis said:

Tim, I can understand the costs in Tampa....I moved here from Orlando in '03, at the same rate of pay. However, with the cost of living issue, it was like an $8 an hour raise!

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Am I hijacking my own thread?

Yeh, you know the pain then. My wife is heck-bent on home ownership, but the prices here are forcing us to rent. Taxes alone can be $200 a month. I can barely afford to live here.

Miami is feeling more pain - as much as $300k. They're up against the 'glades, so all the local land is developed, period. Before much longer, it'll be as bad as Manhatten.

TM

have you thought of looking in either Bartow or Lakeland? Fairly reasonable (for FL), but a heck of a commute....

Already checked on Lakeland, too durned far - Highway 4 turns into a parking lot at 5pm, same as I-75, SR 301. You know the drill.

Hadn't checked into Bartow. One thing is for sure - taxes are alot less painful in Polk County than Hillsborough, but Pasco is now just as bad.

An illustration of a topic we discussed a while ago - our plant is having trouble finding labor. We use unskilled workers for several basic packaging jobs. These souls are finding out that they cannot afford to live here at all - so they are leaving. It's creating an honest-to-god personnel crunch for us.

TM

Not sure where you are exactly but what about Gibsonton or Plant City? The house may still cost 150K but it should not be a bad section. Show (carnival/circus) people have homes in Gibsonton, if you check around at Showtown bar, the trade show and state fair you may find a deal. The show people get plump (make good money) and buy land etc then later need cash flow so will make deals...these will rarely be publicized. Hwy 41 can be rough but there are secondary roads that will get you to Gibtown.

This is the trade show I referred too; http://www.gibtownshowmensclub.com/events/trade_show/trade_show.html

TimothyMoulder said:

10",8" - before my time. I saw some once when I was 23, but never measured them. ...

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There were both sizes.

I used to lug them around in my backpack back in college. The 10" were a pain in the butt because they would not fit in a binder and so they tended to get damaged.

But they still beat carrying around a deck of punch cards like I did my Freshman year.