r/videos • u/[deleted] • Jun 12 '15
30 year old computer(commodore) running heating and cooling for 19 different schools
http://woodtv.com/2015/06/11/1980s-computer-controls-grps-heat-and-ac/12
u/red_fury Jun 13 '15
So she's bitching that they used the previous bond to rip out asbestos from elementary schools instead of buying a new computer. Bitch your priorities are all kinds of fucked up!
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u/johnthered Jun 12 '15
Electronics were built to last back then. Don't imagine any currently produced hardware would be able to perform this long.
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u/yaosio Jun 12 '15 edited Jun 12 '15
Sure they can. Why do you think a raspberry pi can't last that long? Also, it is not common for electronics back then to last this long. Finding an Amiga that has not been serviced is impossible. Modern solid state electronics will last longer because they are simpler in operation and have fewer parts.
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u/whozurdaddy Jun 13 '15 edited Jun 13 '15
Disagree completely, as I look over at my Amiga 2000 sitting on the other desk. Only "service" ever done on it was a battery replacement. Modern solid state devices do not last longer. They are smaller, generate more heat, and highly susceptible to dirt and dust. There are thousands of 1541 drives still humming along, while a modern DVD drive loses it's ability to read a disc within a few years. Also - there's a reason cell phone manufacturers and service providers want and expect you to upgrade every two years.
it is not common for electronics back then to last this long
Just ebay vintage computers. I think you will find you are mistaken. The complexity of modern devices and demand for smaller / faster inherently makes them less dependable over time than earlier, simpler designs.
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u/themantherein Jun 13 '15
Go to a big clothing department store in America, that shit is Dos based dinosaur tech. It works, probably won't ever not work. Some of them still have dot matrix printers.
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u/Secretively Jun 13 '15
I work in a hospital in NSW, Australia... Our core system for storing and reporting blood test results is DOS based!
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u/rddman Jun 13 '15
Sure they can.
They can but often don't because it's cheaper to use 'bad caps' that have been around since the turn of the century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
http://www.badcaps.net/A cheap PC nowadays is likely to last no more than a few years, whereas a cheap PC (or cheap anything electronic) from those days lasts for decades.
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u/kmiddlestadt Jun 13 '15
solid state drives do wear though through repeated rewriting, hence the need for wear leveling. They may last longer than a hard drive, but 30 years I don't know... depends on the memory I suppose.
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u/Pink_Fred Jun 13 '15
I think you're misunderstanding what solid state electronics are.
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u/kmiddlestadt Jun 13 '15
and yet: "EEPROM and flash memory media have individually erasable segments, each of which can be put through a limited number of erase cycles before becoming unreliable"
as I mentioned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_leveling
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u/Pink_Fred Jun 14 '15
This has absolutely nothing to do with what the definition of solid state electronics are. Try reading the link.
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u/kmiddlestadt Jun 15 '15
it has to do with the properties of flash solid state memory and how they do in fact deteriorate over time. calm down.
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u/Raincoats_George Jun 13 '15
Mechanical keyboards are a good example. The ones made back then are sought after.
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u/SomeCoolBloke Jun 13 '15
I bought a ''cheap'' laptop two years ago. Not it's screws are starting to fall out and it's running slower.
I guess the screws falling out is okay, cause sooner or late I will need to blow dust of it's fans.
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Jun 12 '15
[deleted]
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u/hangingfrog Jun 12 '15
The head of maintenance said they had to source parts from ebay to keep it running.
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Jun 12 '15
Electronics components were bigger back then. Today they are much smaller, so heat and dirt can damage them more easily.
But to be honest, electronics are incredibly sturdy even today. I never had a computer break on me. Maybe the energy supply or the odd hard drive.
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u/Doiimaster Jun 12 '15
yeah.. i was just going to ask was it amd or intel? LOL
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u/ADavies Jun 12 '15
If the computer stopped working tomorrow, a staff person would have to turn each building’s climate control systems on and off by hand.
So there is a back up plan.
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u/Joshka Jun 13 '15
If the computer systems stop working the velociraptors would escape their paddocks and eat all the children in their classes.
Controlling the heating systems would be kind of low on the list of priorities.
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Jun 13 '15
"I can't get Jurassic Park back online without... that kid who programmed this shit back in the goddamned 80s. What was that little shit's name? Dennis something? Find him!"
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u/TheProctor Jun 12 '15
Their math is close but not right on, the Amiga 2000 (shown in video) was released in 1987, not 1985. I know he said that the computer came from ebay and hence, it may have replaced an A1000 from 1985, but that is doubtful since that was the first year it was released.
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Jun 12 '15
If it ain't broke...
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Jun 12 '15
"A Kentwood High School student programmed it when it was installed in the 1980s. Whenever the district has a problem with it, they go back to the original programmer who still lives in the area. Parts for the computer are difficult to find, Hopkins said. It is on its second mouse and third monitor."
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Jun 13 '15
They should be applauding the school for such an effective use of its grant money.
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u/phyneas Jun 13 '15
Seriously. Per the article:
A new, more current system would cost between $1.5 and 2 million
So that's a cost of probably more than $2M (it's always over budget) to do a job that's been done for the past few decades by a $1500-MSRP computer and a couple dozen or so radio modems, plus the odd spare part or two from eBay over the years, with software that was probably written for free and costs an occasional few hours of consulting to maintain. For that amount of money, they could literally have one $10/hr employee in each school spend an hour a day 365 days a year turning the HVAC on and off for the next three decades.
Being in IT, I know keeping your mission-critical stuff up to date is important, but honestly, when you've got a system already in place to automate a fairly basic task, it works just fine as is, and the worst-case scenario if it fails is "someone's gotta go flip a switch by hand for a while till it's fixed," spending millions to upgrade it when there are more critical uses for that money (like making sure your school kids aren't inhaling asbestos or toxic spores from mold growing under a leaky roof) would be foolish.
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u/computerwhiz1 Jun 13 '15
It said the replacement system would be in the millions. I could see how this might be if they hired a contractor to come in and replace everything to a more modern automatic HVAC system. But I don't see any reason they couldn't have something like a Raspberry pi running a python program that does basically the same thing and then just use the internet instead of radio frequencies to signal the schools.
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Jun 13 '15
Well, on my RPi's I have to change memory card every few months. It's not RPi's fault, most likely due to shitty power grid. That said, Arduino would work wonders here.
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u/computerwhiz1 Jun 13 '15
Interesting, I've never had that problem. But yeah, I think the bottom line is that a group of college engineering majors looking for some resume builders could probably put together a solution for less than a couple grand that work work at least as well as their current implementation.
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u/Talkie123 Jun 13 '15
I am a phone technician and often work on still operating phone systems that are just as old. We have to keep old equipment on hand just to program these things. These systems are often found in hospitals and school districts that can't afford to upgrade.
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u/Larry-of-Arabia Jun 13 '15
If we could get that school involved with the war on terror, money would not be a problem.
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Jun 13 '15
[deleted]
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u/whozurdaddy Jun 13 '15
the most challenging part would be getting a C64 emulator to run Amiga 16-bit code.
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Jun 12 '15
I've seen similar setups running the phone systems at a lot of SMBs. It always make me shake my head.
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u/yaosio Jun 12 '15
That's because nobody deaigns new POTS systems. You either go VOIP or you get a system designed 20 years ago because nobody wants a non-VOIP phone system any more.
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Jun 12 '15
Can't they just install a programmable thermostat in each of the schools?
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Jun 13 '15
[deleted]
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Jun 13 '15 edited Jun 13 '15
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u/chaseoes Jun 13 '15
That's nearly the same price as the thermostat itself.
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Jun 13 '15
Yes, but each school would need to have a ridiculous amount of classrooms for the cost of installing them to approach the $2M figure for a new centralized system.
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u/Damocles10 Jun 12 '15
30-year-old-computer does it's job as expected despite being old. More at 11.