Still booting after all these years: The people stuck using ancient Windows computers
As technology marches on, some people get trapped using decades-old software and devices. Here's a look inside the strange, stubborn world of obsolete Windows machines.
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The elevator was running Windows XP.
Clearly an extreme case of overengineering. A elevator has no business running more than a few microcontrollers.
It's probably only the screen component that is running an old version of embedded windows.
That's what I think too. And then I see "Their systems are built into everything around us", which basically only applies to PCs and laptops. What is built into pretty much everything around us, is GnuLinux.
Not even GNU - just Linux.
Yeah yeah, something something GNU/Linux blah blah copypasta....
What is built into pretty much everything around us is GnuLinux.
Many things, but far from that.
Yeah, it was a statement, not a question. But it's partly my fault for not using the comma appropriately. Fixed.
Screen? In a elevator?
How else are you gonna show ads?
I hate that you are right.
Yes? That is not that unusual and it is mentioned in the third sentence of the article.
As I rode up to the 14th floor, my eyes were drawn to a screen built into the side of the lift.
Those screens can easily run on an integrated Raspberry Pi microcontroller, they dont exactly have complex graphics
We are far away from the release of the Raspberry Pi if that screen is running an early version of Windows CE. Putting a PC in the elevator to drive the screen was probably the most cost effective solution.
Was but theres no reason to keep doing that
New ones probably use something newer. The 20 year old elevator in a hospital will only be upgraded if something breaks.
There's not particularly good reason to stop doing it in that scenario either.
You have an offline technology stack in that elevator that has been doing the job correctly for 20 years. Why take on the expense and risk of changing things that aren't currently broken?
It would be crazy if you are building new to resort to that stack, but for an established elevator, why bother?
Same for some old oscilloscopes at work. I'm not crazy about the choice but I can hardly suggest it would be practical to change it while the oscilloscopes still do their function.
I would say it's a problem if the stack is online, but if it is self contained, the age of the software doesn't make it a problem in and out itself.
RPi is not a microcontroller.
But how else can it book requests for priority access, and verify the credit card for whoever booked the elevator?
Ah, the blossoms of unimpeded, wild capitalism.
Qube cinema servers only got off XP in 2015. They're still on 7 though.
In highrises with lots of stops and users, it uses some more advanced software to schedule the optimal stops, or distribute the load between multiple lifts. A similar concept exists for HDD controllers, where the read write arm must move to different positions to load data stored on different plates and sectors, and Repositioning the head is a slow and expensive process that cuts down the data transfer rate.
This requires little more than a 286. It's an elevator. Responding in times measured in seconds. What kind of computations do you think are required here? Imaginary quaternion matrixes? Squared?
Yes, but if you have it as a Windows program it's easier to configure on a screen with mouse and keyboard, change settings, display help files or give the source code to someone else to make changes or add features.
also it was probably not too expensive to grad a bog standard PC off the shelf and do it on that. I've see raspis in the wild doing tasks like that. and those will be outdated by the time they're replaced too
But how else can it be safe to connect to the internet?
You need to be on-site to fix it anyway, just access the debug port.
